I seem to be stuck in the year 1986 recently.  Maybe because our firstborn child, born in ‘86, now has his own first born.  Maybe, I just don’t have enough to keep my mind busy and I am drifting….

 

My DH was in his final quarter of Seminary, I was a college hall director and had completed my Masters 2 years earlier.  We had a 3 month old. Daddy worked for the college as the switchboard operator every night until midnight.  As a part of my salary package, we ate in the college cafeteria.  Don’t feel badly for us – it was an award winning food service, owned by the college.  We had fabulous food!

 

In the evenings, I would take our new baby over to “Convo” – what we called our cafeteria – and have dinner while baby was passed around between college girls who wanted to babysit.  Then I would get a “dinner to go” and take it upstairs and next door to his daddy.  We would sit for awhile with him and then walk back to our dorm to wait for him to come home after work.  

 

This little bundle of joy was born in February, we lived in Ohio, so it was wet and cold until April.  Often, instead of pushing his “buggy” over to dinner, I would put him in his car seat and drive over.  I know… a little wet and cold never hurt any baby, but he was my first… what did I know?

 

Backing up

 

We had recently sold both of our cars and put the money toward the purchase of our first brand new car.  That was a harrowing experience – buying a car.  I am still scarred today – so we only buy cars at CarMax now…  there is no dealing, lol!  We bought ourselves a little 4 door black Renault Alliance.  It was a 5 speed – I never had driven a manual before – and it was shiney and new! We loved it!  We were real adults! It was a great little family car, one we could easily put the car seat in when our baby was born and one that had a new feature of child protection locks, for when our baby became a toddler and thought he should be able to open the door on his own.  We were uptown!!

 

Daddy is at work and mommy and baby decide to head to dinner.

 

 I bundle him up and head out to our shiny new car to buckle him into his car seat.  Back then, you had to put the car seat, rear facing in the middle of the seat.  So I climb in the back seat and start to buckle him in and I decide that it is too cold or wet or something outside, and our fragile little boy might catch a draft, so I pull the door closed behind me.  I wrestle him into his car seat, and proceed to get out of the backseat and into the front seat to drive to “Convo”.

 

 

UMMMMM… hang on ….. the back door won’t open?

 

Ah.. I must have locked it.  I unlock it. Nope… door won’t open.

 

What in the world?

 

By now, you have figured out that even though this sweet infant could barely hold his head up, we had decided that the child protection locks should be engaged on the back doors so that he could never jump out of his infant car seat and open the door and fly out of the car!

 

Unfortunately, because of that decision, his mother couldn’t get out either!

 

Now what do I do?

 

I am tall and I had recently had a c-section, so crawling over the console to get to the front seat is out of the question.  The only thing left to do is to try and catch someone’s attention as they walk by.  Here is the problem with that… college students are a bit self absorbed and not looking in cars as they walk past.  And those that do think I am waving at them!!

 

Finally, someone, I cannot remember who, came along and opened my door from the outside for me.  Phew!  Off to dinner, finally.

 

Here is how bright I am… It didn’t occur to me for a VERY long time that I could have gotten myself out of that backseat with one simple move.

 Roll down the window.

Reach out and open the door from the outside!
I never claimed to be an engineer….