The Day I Locked My Keys (And My Husband's Keys) in the Car

Author Janet Kay Jensen is running a contest at her blog, which you can find at http://www.janetkayjensen.blogspot.com/, where readers are sharing stories about times that they've locked their keys in the car. After writing out my sad story in Janet's comment trail, I looked at it and thought...hey, this looks like a blog entry. So, my apologies to anyone who has already read or will read this on Janet's blog, but here is (drum roll) THE STORY OF THE DAY I LOCKED MY KEYS (AND MY HUSBAND'S KEYS) IN THE CAR--with some paragraphing and other edits added in that I couldn't make when this Blog Entry was only a Comment.

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I have some fun stories about times (yes, multiple times) that I've locked myself out of our house or apartment over the years. And times when I've "lost" my keys and had people looking everywhere for them, including the dumpster, only to find them later in my coat pocket.

But the time I actually locked all of our keys in the car, we were about to hike the Narrows at Zions National Park. I didn't have any pockets in what I was wearing, so I'd already put my keys away carefully in the car. My husband let me use his key to open the trunk for some last-minute rummaging around--making sure we had everything, making sure I was wearing the shoes I wanted, and so forth. I set the key down while I took care of my business. When I finished, there was a split second between the time that I slammed the trunk lid and the time that it actually latched where I suddenly realized that I'd left our only key in the trunk! Of course, the split second was not long enough for me to have a second realization that I really should stop the lid from closing and grab that key!

I felt very sheepish as I told my husband what I'd done. Our solution? We went on our hike anyway.

But when we came back, we had to involve the park service in unlocking our car. And they had to involve a highly technical device known as a coat hanger. It left little scratches on our newly tinted windows, and the fancy security locks were tricky to get past. But they did finally get our car open.