The Car-lock

I am not good with cars, I have to admit it. So when I wanted to drive off to work one sunny morning I noticed that I somehow had locked the doors, while the keys were still in the ignition. My brother, who was around (and is a very handy and cool-thinking person) came out of the house and decided to help his forever unlucky sister. While we were getting a lovely sun-tan he was scratching his head, and I was scratching mine. Taking out the whole door was not an option, clearly. We needed tools, he said. In my house that's not a huge problem, we have garages full of tools.

First he said that perhaps his own car-key would fit. It fit alright, and broke off. So now I had half a key inside the lock. Then came the screw-diver, to retrieve his key. That became stuck as well. We decided to do more head-scratching. Our neighbors decided to put in some effort as well, and came up with brilliant ideas, which were useless in the end. By now my brother was challenged, I could see his brains working.

"If I put a coat hanger inside the window, I can open the car from the inside" he said. In his mind the whole problem was already solved. I smiled and thought the same. Indeed, there was a tiny gap and brother inserted the coat hanger. Unfortunately it was the wrong kind and now the coat hanger was stuck inside the window. "What if I break open the boot, and crawl inside?" was his next solution. "But then I can't lock the boot anymore" I said. I started sweating, this was going nowhere. But another tool came out of the garage and was inserted into the boot this time. It became stuck too, and I despaired.

By now my loyal car looked like a circus on 4 wheels, things sticking out front, left and center. "I'm not going to drive around like that, even if you can get it open!" I said. By now my 8 year old son was standing on the other side of the vehicle, trying to get my attention. But my attention was elsewhere, and polite boy that he was, he ended up just standing there, looking at us.

Finally he caught my attention and in a tiny voice he said:"But Mom, the window on this side is open, look!" and right as rain, he put his arm through the open window, opened the door and got in. We just stood there, staring.

It just shows, how two relatively intelligent adults overlook the obvious and a 8 year old solves the problem in no time! Since then I started to listen to kids; you never know!