I had a brilliant idea the other day, one that all car manufacturers should adopt.
When you are in the car and your wife has left the parking brake half-set, the brake release should have a light that turns on, so it's REALLY OBVIOUS how to un-set it completely, even if it's COMPLETELY DARK outside, when the dash illumination is TOTALLY INADEQUATE to show you where the release is.
Otherwise someone might start hitting buttons essentially at random, which could be dangerous if the car is in motion. And if someone actually heaven forbid got hurt, you could get sued.
So, lightbulbs for the brake release. 'kay? Good.
You may wonder how I came up with such a brilliant if obvious idea. While I frequently come up with such patentable improvements, this one has a special story to go with it.
I took Matthew to the grocery store a couple nights ago. We got groceries and a couple used games from the Gamestop conveniently located next door. (Not that this influenced my choice of grocery store at all.) When we got back, Matthew was really excited. "Dada push wrong button!" "That's enough, son." He'd already announced this a dozen times. "Dada push wrong button!"
We got inside. Rachel had dinner ready. Maybe that would distract him. "Dada push wrong button!"
Guess not.
You see, I explained to my wife, on the way back I noticed that the ebrake light was on. Not sure how I missed it on the way in. Chalk it up to a relentless barrage of three-year-old verbiage from my son.
"Hmm," I thought. "I should probably turn that off." So I rummaged about for the release. Ah, here's a button: Pop! and the trunk went up. Guess that wasn't it. Well, maybe it's one of those ebrakes where you push it a second time to release it. Push!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECH!!!!!!!!!!!
The wheels locked and I struggled a bit to not veer into another lane. Good thing the light 20 feet ahead was red and I was already slowing, or I probably would have been rear-ended by the minivan behind me. Or if not him, someone; tailgating is a common hobby here in Utah. As it is, the drivers who saw it must have wondered what on earth my son had done to deserve the punishment that would surely follow such a drastic stop. That's what you get for popping the trunk, kid!
I finally found the ebrake handle and released it. I pulled into the gas station conveniently located on the corner to close the trunk, and continued home. Could happen to anyone. No big deal. Just a little emergency stop for no particular reason.
Matthew, of course, thought this was the COOLEST. TRIP. EVER. "Dada push wrong button!" Yes, yes, yes, already!
Sheesh.
1 comment:
Wow. That sounds eerily familiar. A few years ago I was taking my (then) four-year-old to school. We were on the PA Turnpike, which had just switched over to the "EZ-Pass" (RFID-based no-stop billing) system. Apparently, I wasn't paying enough attention when I exited, because I'd ended up in the "cash" lane rather than the EZ-Pass lane.
The toll-taker was completely at a loss to figure out what to do--I was "exiting without a ticket", so theoretically, their procedure was to charge me for the entire 400-mile length of the Turnpike (rather than the 5-mile stretch I actually used). Worse, given the range of the transponder, it's likely that it had already correctly charged me, but she didn't know what to do, and apparently the next step in their procedure is to call for a state police patrol to figure it out...
...45 minutes later, the officer showed up, listened for 30 seconds, wrote me a note to use in case I got double-charged, and sent me on my way.
But for two solid years, every time I used the Turnpike with her in the car, I was treated to "Uh-oh! I think you're in the wrong lane again..." from my backseat driver.
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