Did you lock your keys inside the car -- again?

By Dave Emanuel

Rick was usually punctual, so I was beginning to get concerned when it was 8:00 o’clock and he still hadn’t shown up for our 7:30 meeting. When he finally drove up at about 8:10, I asked why he was so late. He
stammered a bit and then with obvious embarrassment said, “Well, I would have been here on time except….. I locked my keys in the car.”

That’s understandable. It happens to a lot of people. But there’s an easy way to prevent it. After you hit the “lock” button, but BEFORE you close the door, make sure you’re holding the keys in your hand. It doesn’t take too many times before closing a car door doesn’t feel right unless you’re hand is balled up into a fist with the keys between your fingers and the palm of your hand.

You can make key security even more of a habit by making it part of a sequence— after you enter a car, you fasten your seat belt. When you arrive at your destination, you unfasten your seat belt, grab you keys and
exit the vehicle. Then, with your keys in one hand, you lock the door with the other. If you don’t feel the keys in your fist, you don’t lock the door.

One word of caution—it takes a while before the procedure becomes fool proof. A few weeks after I showed it to Rick, he was late for a meeting once again. When he arrived and asked him what happened—you guessed it—he had locked his keys in the car again. When I said, “I showed you
how to avoid that…”, he cut me off and said, “I know, I know. I made a fist just like you showed me. The problem was, I didn’t have the keys in it” (True story). But as far as I know, that was the last time he ever locked his keys in his car.