A panic moment

Motherhood has kicked in and our little son is already 3 months old. He's a happy little man, small for us but big for his age. He enjoys going out and about, especially hanging on my stomach in his strap facing the world. What a bliss having your whole life in front of you.

Yesterday we had a bit of a panic moment, however.

We had lunch on a street cafe in Hollywood downtown (in Florida, not THE Hollywood) and walked back to the car which was parked on the side of the main street. Mikkel was in his stroller, mommy had a big purse on her shoulder with all the baby gear. The car was pretty warm, we were parked in the sun. I opened the door, put my purse in the front seat and Mikkel in the back. Feeling a bit concerned about the heat, I started the engine to put the air-condition on before unfolding and packing the stroller.

I walked to the back of the car to open the trunk. It was locked. Very odd, it never locks automatically. Or does it ...? I turned around again and grabbed the front door handle.  Locked. I tried the back door, the doors on the passenger side, the trunk once again. Locked. My heart was pounding and I started feeling the strangling sensation of panic. I tried all doors again and had to admit the unthinkable: I'm locked out of my car ... and the key, the purse, the phone and the baby are inside.

I kept trying to unlock it, by force, by thought, by miracle, whatever, while desperately looking around for something heavy to smash the window with.

A guy driving by saw my despair and rolled down his window. "Do you need help, ma'm?" I told him status quo, and he said "Oh, shit.  I'll pull over." He came out, acompanied by his little girl, and handed me his phone. "Anyone you can call?" He said. I started dialing my husbands number but couldn't recall the digits. But then again, what could he do ...? I asked the guy if he knew how to break into cars. He didn't. (Stupid thing to ask, really. But I was kind of desperate) "Maybe I should call the local police" I said. "Yes go ahead dial 911." He replied. "you could call a locksmith, but he ain't gonna get here fast enough, so you might as well call 911." So I did.

A few minutes later we could hear the sirens. There was a queue up the road, and all the cars had to move out of the way. The policecar car  pulled up next to us and a cop with mirror shades stepped out, asking what the problem was. I pointed at my screaming baby inside the car and told him what had happened. "We need a firetruck to jerk up the door" he said. "They're on their way." Another police car came, and two guys stepped out to overlook the situation. "Is this your car, m'am?" They asked me. "Do you know the lock code?" Our car has a lock code on the door handle, which I've never bothered to learn because I didn't think this could happen. How stupid is that. Be sure I know it by heart now. The police kindly explained to me that it's printed on the back of the car manual and it's a good thing to know it. Yeah.

Finally the firetruck came, full sirens. They blocked off the road, got out the gear and jerked the car door open. I jumped in the backseat and grabbed Mikkel, who was soaked from sweating and screaming. The air condition was on luckily, but only low. He was fine, though. Scared, warm and confused, but fine.

The uniformed rescuers wrapped up their equipment, adjusted my air-condition to full blast, gave us a friendly "good luck, take care" and "hope he's ok" before leaving. The queue of cars on hold were allowed to continue up the road again, slowly passing the scene of action.

Mikkel is sadly not old enough to be aware of the 4 cops, two police cars, 2 firemen and the big firetruck  that were there to save him. Yeah, save him from mommy's clumsy lockout. Kind of glad he's too young to understand that.