Honda has discovered the secret to comedic timing.
Normally I don’t like to endorse a brand or company because there are people who are paid to do that and I’m not one of them, but we’ve got two Hondas—a van and a CRV—and they’ve been better than any other vehicles we’ve owned. We got the CRV in 2019 to replace the previous CRV we got in 1999. We went to the same dealership and bought the new one exactly twenty years after the old one, which was nice enough to stop working while parked in our driveway. The only thing that was different was our sales guy. That seems to be an area where there’s a lot of turnover. They get paid to endorse whatever they’re selling but maybe they aren’t paid enough.
Anyway I had to put some things in the CRV. I didn’t take my keys with me because I didn’t think I’d need them. We don’t keep anything in the car except maybe some umbrellas and tire pressure gauge and sometimes an old tarp if I’m planning to put raw chicken in the back.
In retrospect I should have known better. The CRV’s automatic locking system kicks in at random times. The van is predictable. Once we get out and walk ten feet away it automatically locks itself, so we have to be careful to always have the keys with us. And the van’s timing is so perfect that I can go in the house, get the key out of my wife’s purse, point the fob at the van from the window, click the “unlock” button, and by the time I get out of the house down to the driveway I’ll be just in time to hear the “click” of the van locking itself just as I reach for the driver’s side door.
Since the CRV’s lock is much more random, though, I also had a pretty good chance of it being open. Except it wasn’t. I guess because it hadn’t been driven for a few days it said, “Well, if I’m going to be left out here in the cold I might as well lock myself up.”
I really shouldn’t have been taking chances in this weather either. The temperature according to the thermometer was in single digits and the wind chill was twenty below—and we’re talking Fahrenheit which means it was fifty-two degrees below freezing. Not that any scale matters when it’s that cold, and, in fact, minus forty Fahrenheit is the same as minus forty Celsius which is a fun fact I learned when my teachers were convinced we might actually adopt the metric system, but that’s another story.
My wife was asleep and I’d left my keys in the bedroom so rather than take a chance on waking her up I got her keys out of her purse. But I didn’t want to carry her keys. I pointed the fob through the window and pressed the “unlock” button. The CRV is closer to the house so it was reasonable to assume the timing on both vehicles is the same and the differential would be just enough for me to get to it and open the door before it relocked itself.
I got to the CRV just in time to hear the “click” of it locking itself.
It’s possible the CRV has the same automatic locking system as the van, but if it does why does it only do this when it’s ridiculously cold outside and I’ve got my arms full?
You and your CRV both have great comedic timing, Chris.
ANN J KOPLOW recently posted…Day 3648: An important date
I try to have great timing. I wish the CRV’s timing was a little off, though–in my favor.