The adventures of Stupid Woman

Last Saturday I had arranged with a friend to go to Groningen to do some really girly shopping. You know: buy clothes, try every perfume in the store, have lunch, giggle a lot, jog past chocolate selling shops, high fiving if we succeeded in doing that, those sort of things.

She lives in FarFarAwayLand (not that far away though, about half an hour in the car) and the plan was that she’d drive to our house and then I’d drive us into town with, and now you’re going to frown and think: “what a snob”, one of our cars. But I mention our assorted choice of cars for a reason.

You see, we have a Landrover Defender. Great car, joy to drive (if you like the occasional near-heart attack from loud bangs caused by stones that shoot out of the tires and bang against the wheel house, and enjoy feeling every bump in the road going from butt through spine to head), but it doesn’t fit particularly well in the average parking garage. Either the ceiling of the parking garage is too low, or Bob is too high.
So, as much as I like Bob, he’s not for going into town with.

Then there’s Gretl, our Range Rover. Incredibly comfortable, quite chic (if you ignore the fact that I often use it to get huge bags of carrots and other big bags of horse feed which inevitably leave a trail of… well, carrots and horse feed on the cream coloured carpet) and a great car for going shopping with. It can hold tons of bags, but it is wide and long and not a joy to drive around in in a crowded parking garage, looking for a space to squeeze the beast into.

Oh, and if you’re wondering why she’s called Gretl; there are two language options in her inbuilt GPS. German or English. We’ve tried English for a while, but she assumes that your driving on the wrong side of the road then and it became very confusing at times, so we changed to German and now we’re brushing up on German ‘verkehrsbezogene Begriffe’. Oder so etwas.

Anyway, the car of choice was therefore our smaller car. It’s a hard top convertible. Fast, good-looking and more importantly, it easily fits in a parking garage. This car is nice to drive in in the summer, with the top open (it does this incredibly neat magic trick in which it lets its roof disappear in the boot. That is almost the best part of this car, the roof/no roof magic trick. It never fails to amaze me.) and nice to drive in the winter, with the top closed.

 

The only problem was that we hadn’t driven it for a week or so, and as you know it was freezing cold here in the Netherlands and we don’t have a garage so it had been outside in the cold and the door on the passenger’s side was frozen shut.
Fortunately I had expected that that might be the case, so about an hour before friend was supposed to arrive here I put on a coat and thick, warm gloves and went outside to clear the windscreen and the other windows of ice, tried the doors, discovered that the one on the passenger’s side didn’t open and phoned hubs’ mobile (he was mucking the stables) with my mobile (I didn’t feel like walking to the stables to tell him) that I was going for a drive to see if the door-in-ice would thaw. It was either that or rolling out a couple of patch cables and attack the door with my hair/blow dryer. I chose the driving around option.

So there I went. It still was bitterly cold outside, but I was comfortably warm in my winter coat with the nice, thick gloves protecting my hands from the arctic temperatures. So I drove through a neighbouring village where another friend lives, waved as I passed their house and took a scenic route back home again. Meanwhile the car was warming up nicely. Heated seat doing its job to keep the posterior at a nice temperature, windows ice free inside and outside. I had good hope that the other door would be freed from the layer of ice that kept it firmly shut.

I parked the car in front of the house. And when I wanted to get out, I couldn’t open my door! I mean, w h a t ? Had ‘my’ door somehow been frozen shut too while I was driving around? But could that be possible? I tried again. No. Didn’t open. I tried the door on the passenger’s side. No. Didn’t open either. What in the name of Elvis caused these doors to stay closed? I pressed the distant control a couple of times to close and open the locks, but that didn’t help. Both doors stayed shut. I was baffled. And puzzled. Dumbfounded even.

And then I remembered that I had my mobile with me.
So I phoned hubs. “Yes?”
”Hi.”
”Hi?”
”I have a tiny problem.”
”Oh?”
”I can’t get out of the car.”
”You can’t get out of the car.”
”No.”
”Oh.”
”So…”
”Why can you not get out of the car?”
”The door won’t open.”
”Oh?”
”Hmm.”
”Where are you?”
”In our drive.”
*sigh* “Okay, I’m coming.”
”Don’t sigh.”
”I didn’t sigh.”
”I definitely heard… okay.”

He apparently wasn’t in a hurry to free me from my car-prison, because it took ages before he appeared. He had a vicious smile on his face I thought.
He opened the door from the outside.
”What do you mean, I can’t get out of the car.”
”No really. I couldn’t open the door from the inside.”
I got out of the car and he got in.
I closed the door, thinking that it would be really funny if he would be locked inside now.
But no, of course he wasn’t, because he knew that there is a tiny switch just in front of the door handle on the inside of the car, that locks or unlocks it independently from the distant control. Why? I don’t know why it has that switch. I never even knew of its existence. And I had unintentionally pressed it into the ‘lock’ setting when I tried to open the door with my hands comfortably nestled in my very thick gloves.

You learn something every day.

And the short drive had indeed unfrozen the other door, so when friend arrived we could both get in (and out) of our pretty little convertible with the not idiot proof lock/unlock switch.

Gawd.

Hubs thought it was all incredibly funny.
I don’t get his sense of humour.
It is totally wrong!