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Keys locked in car an issue

It always seems that the Long Suffering Husband calls me with an emergency when I am on assignment. I’m sure he calls at other times; I just remember it better when he calls when I’m doing something else. It flusters me, and I want to run off and rescue him, but I have to be an adult and work. It’s unfortunate.

This time, I was in Burgettstown — this will be important later — when he called.

I usually don’t pick up the phone when I’m on assignment, only if it’s the LSH or the kids. (Sorry, Grandmama.)

“I locked my keys in the car,” he said, sounding unreasonably calm.

“I’m on assignment … “

“Where are you?”

“Burgettstown.” It is, give or take, a half hour between where I was and where he was, and it was already after 9 a.m. — he was going to be very, very late to work. “I’ll only be 15 or 20 minutes.”

I hoped the car wasn’t still running. The last time he locked his keys in the car, the motor was still running and it was during an epic snowstorm. Also, the car managed to be slightly in gear somehow, lurching back and forth like a Hammer Film monster. We had to summon a locksmith from Avella — the only one who would show up in a storm — and hope the car didn’t lurch right through the garage door.

The LSH is usually the competent one in our relationship, but when he decides to bomb, it’s the mother of all bombs.

I rushed through my appointment, then hurried home. It was going on 10 a.m., and he was so very, very late. I may have broken the speed limit a little.

As I neared our house, I gave him a quick call.

“I’m almost there,” I said. “I’m on XYZ Street.”

A long pause. “I’m at work.”

“What?!”

“I’m in Robinson,” he said. “I locked the keys in my car at work.”

“Oh.” He hadn’t said he was as home … but he hadn’t said he was at work, either.

“If I had been at home, I would have called you much earlier,” he added.

“You can come up later, if you want … are you going to be in Pennsylvania again later today?”

I sighed. “No. I’ll just come up now.” I would have been there already if I left from Burgettstown. Instead, I unnecessarily tacked an extra hour onto my drive. Counting time to drive back to my office, unlocking his car was going to cost me more than two hours of my day.

I could have blamed him for not telling me where he was, but I can’t count the number of times he came to unlock my car. (He actually got an AAA membership to address this.)

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“It’s fine … but I’m stopping at the craft store on my way home.”

It’s cheaper than a locksmith.

(Wallace-Minger, a resident of Weirton, is community editor of The Weirton Daily Times.)

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