Watch and learn
Early yesterday morning I carried my son out the back door as we set out for our drive to day care. Even from the doorway I could see something was funny about our minivan, and as I got closer I saw what it was. The driver-side sliding door was open. We rarely use this door; we certainly hadn't used it the previous night. And we always lock the car. So how...?
And then I remembered. The night before, after we brought him in from the car the little guy had been fondling my keychain. I didn't think too much of it, and his mom took them away after only a minute or two and replaced them with his toy keys (a brilliant invention). I have to conclude that he managed to press (and hold), in their proper order, both the keyless entry unlock button and the button which opens the power sliding door. He did this, I might add, from behind one interior wall, one exterior wall, and a layer of aluminum siding, and from a distance of a hundred feet*. Why the remote won't reach a hundred feet in my hands is anyone's guess. But it seems clear that our little scientist has been paying very close attention to how we get into the car ("bwoo cah"), and I have to wonder what else he knows how to do. Has his field research extended to the ignition system?
It didn't occur to me until this morning to be grateful that we didn't purchase the remote-start option, something for which the coming weekend's frigid weather might otherwise make me wistful. Never again.
*I know this for a fact because the extravagently hundred foot-long extension cord I got for the purpose of charging my old car's battery proved just barely long enough, with portions of its length suspended in the air as quite alarming amounts of current flow out across the backyard.