The Smart Key

Now that I’m push­ing sev­en­ty, every­one is intent on remind­ing me that the mind slows and the mem­o­ry dims as we grow old­er. I don’t buy it. My mind is still as sharp as it was when I was a lawyer and an exec­u­tive. There’s been no slip­page whatsoever.

Except for an occa­sion­al insignif­i­cant absent-mind­ed­ness relat­ed to oper­at­ing my car. On the the­o­ry that you can’t be too care­ful, I fig­ured I bet­ter take deci­sive action to nip that stuff in the bud before it spreads, so I devel­oped three sim­ple rules we baby boomers can use to guard against auto­mo­tive forgetfulness.

Rule 1: When back­ing the car out of the garage, it is extreme­ly impor­tant to open the garage door first. I can’t stress enough how pro­found­ly con­se­quen­tial this rule is. Get off on the wrong foot here, and there’s no get­ting back on track for the rest of the day. More­over, a thought­less mis­take can inflict seri­ous dam­age both to the garage door and to the car, $2,533.44 to be exact.

Best prac­tice: When you fire up the engine and shift into reverse, look in the rear view mir­ror. If you see a big wall of met­al, don’t pop the clutch.

Rule 2: Always put the Smart Key in your pock­et before you leave home in the car. Those of you lucky enough to still be dri­ving a 1954 Hud­son Hor­net are prob­a­bly unfa­mil­iar with the Smart Key. The car com­pa­nies came up with this bright idea a few years ago. Push­ing the starter but­ton will start the car only if the car sens­es the pres­ence of the Smart Key. Nobody can steal your car with­out it, includ­ing you.

Despite its many advan­tages, the Smart Key presents a dan­ger­ous pit­fall. Case in point: you and your wife both have a Smart Key. She keeps hers in her purse, which she car­ries with her at all times, but you keep yours in your pock­et, which means you have to remem­ber to put it in there. You for­get to put the Smart Key in your pock­et one morn­ing when you dri­ve her to the shop­ping mall. You drop off her and her purse with the engine run­ning. The car will keep run­ning when her Smart Key dis­ap­pears until you cut off the igni­tion, so you dri­ve on to the bar­ber­shop, fail­ing to notice (because you don’t wear your read­ing glass­es while dri­ving, like any sane per­son) the warn­ing that popped up on the mon­i­tor when your wife left the car:  “Smart Key Not Found.”

This is the only warn­ing you will receive. There is no ping­ing, ding-dong­ing, or buzzing, and don’t think you can count on the con­de­scend­ing British lady, who lives in the GPS thing in your dash­board, to say a word about this. She’ll scold you mer­ci­less­ly when you veer off her sacred chart­ed course because of road con­struc­tion, but when she could tell you some­thing that might actu­al­ly help you, she spite­ful­ly keeps mum.

So you dri­ve to the bar­ber­shop and park the car and cut off the engine. When you return, you push the starter but­ton and the car won’t start. “Smart Key Not Found.”

An added com­plex­i­ty is that this fre­quent­ly hap­pens when your cell phone is dead because you for­got to charge it the night before. This forces you to go to a store to ask to bor­row a phone, which usu­al­ly means you have to explain every­thing to a great­ly amused store clerk younger than your grand­daugh­ter. By the way, don’t tell the kid you for­got your Smart Key because you were rat­tled about back­ing your car through your garage door. This will mere­ly inspire more humil­i­at­ing snickers.

When you final­ly get your hands on a phone, it’s imper­a­tive that you NOT call your wife on her cell phone and ask her to come over and help you. Such a request will like­ly pro­voke an insen­si­tive response, such as: “How am I sup­posed to get there, Ein­stein? You’ve got the car.” A heat­ed back and forth may then ensue, roy­al­ly screw­ing up yet again the ever-frag­ile state of mar­i­tal bliss.

Best prac­tice: Call a cab to take you to your wife. When you find her, tell her you don’t know what hap­pened to the Smart Key. Maybe a pick-pock­et stole it while you were
in the bar­ber shop. Bor­row her Smart Key and take the cab back to your car.

Rule 3: If you park your car in a mul­ti­level down­town LA park­ing lot, do not exit the build­ing until you write down on a piece of paper the floor lev­el and space num­ber where you parked. If you don’t have paper, write it on your hand. Fail­ing to fol­low this sim­ple rule almost always results in return­ing to the lot to dis­cov­er that your car is not where you remem­ber park­ing it. If this hap­pens to you, do NOT call 911. Rather, fol­low the steps below.

First, try to deter­mine if you are in the right park­ing lot. Most of these struc­tures look the same. Could be your car is in the one two blocks over. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, if you don’t know whether you’re in the right lot, your prob­lem is so com­plex it’s beyond the scope of this post. I’ll try to address that dilem­ma in some future post, but for now, let’s assume you’re in the right park­ing lot.

Sec­ond, check all the park­ing slots that are sim­i­lar to the one you thought you parked in, such as the same dis­tance from each end of the aisle, then the whole aisle, then the adja­cent aisles, then all the aisles on the floor, then the floor above and the floor below.

If you still can’t find your car, you are reduced to the third step: a vis­it to the park­ing lot’s secu­ri­ty kiosk, which is usu­al­ly staffed with a teenag­er about the same age as the store clerk who laughed at you earlier.

My Inner Lawyer advis­es me that it’s crit­i­cal you report to the kid that the car is Miss­ing, rather than Stolen. Report­ing the car as Stolen can trig­ger a series of unfor­tu­nate events involv­ing the police that may lead to com­mit­ment pro­ceed­ings. My Inner Lawyer wor­ries a lot about com­mit­ment proceedings.

After you report your car as Miss­ing, the kid in the kiosk will dri­ve you in a golf cart round and round the ascend­ing floors to find your car. You thought you were parked on Floor 2. On Floor 7, you lose patience and almost tell the kid to give it up, but then your car mys­te­ri­ous­ly appears in the mid­dle of a row on Floor 11.

“Stop here,” you say in a strained voice. “That’s my car.”

“Wow, mis­ter,” the kid says. “You get rear-end­ed by a Mack truck or what?”

Don’t take the bait. Mum­ble some­thing inten­tion­al­ly unin­tel­li­gi­ble, climb out of the cart, and get in your car. When you’ve gained con­trol of your tem­per, push the starter button.

Of course, noth­ing happens.

Take a deep breath. Do your best to sup­press the over­whelm­ing urge to throw your­self off the eleventh floor of the park­ing struc­ture with a note in your pock­et direct­ing your loved ones to inscribe on your tomb­stone just below your name: “Smart Key Not Found.”

Best Prac­tice: Hope­ful­ly, you remem­bered to charge your cell phone this time. If not, by now you know the drill. One way or anoth­er, call a cab, but don’t try your wife’s patience, using that term loose­ly, by show­ing up at the mall for the sec­ond time in the same week with­out your Smart Key. Mar­i­tal bliss is already hang­ing by a thread. Don’t take any chances. Just have the cab take you home.

When you get there, unlock your front door with your house key, a nice nor­mal unthreat­en­ing key with an IQ low­er than yours. On the sil­ver plate rest­ing on the table just inside the door, your Smart Key will be wink­ing at you. Right where you always put it when you come in so you can’t pos­si­bly for­get to pick it up on your way out.

Post Script: My Inner Lawyer advis­es me to inform you that this post is a work of fic­tion. Any resem­blance to real per­sons, liv­ing or dead, is coin­ci­den­tal and not intend­ed by the author. My Inner Lawyer wor­ries a lot about com­mit­ment proceedings.