It just keeps getting better

I love my minivan. I know that’s not the cool thing to say, a minivan is not a “cool” car. Most people put off and dread the day they have to become minivan owners. Me? I was stoked for it! I love my power locks and power windows. I really love my dual rear power sliding doors. And don’t even get me started on the DVD player, I adore it. And for previously mentioned reasons I love that you can not take the car out of park and into gear without a foot firmly depressing the break.

But there’s one thing I do not love.

I do not love that the car must be turned on, with a foot firmly depressing the break in order to get the car out of park.

Let me just give you a hypothetical situation.

If, say, your car was pulled all the way up under your carport and, say, your daughter said she wanted to wash the windows (of the car) then you might say yes, even though you don’t think it’s a very good idea, because you can’t think of a reason to say no fast enough. And if, say, you told her that while she was at it she should clean all the crap out of the car and then you handed her the keys to the car so that she could get in it (because in this hypothetical you had to always keep the car locked and you had to keep the keys on top of the fridge lest your hypothetical two-year-old son try to steal your car) then about a half an hour later you might see your daughter leave the house with a CD in her hand and you might follow her out to the car to see her putting said CD into the car CD player (which means the keys are in the ignition so that the CD player has power) and she has not only a bottle of Windex but a bottle of Clorox Clean-up spray. And if you yelled at her and sent her to her room and grabbed the CD and the Windex and the Clorox Clean-up spray then you might lock the car and not think about it until the next day.

And if you went out to your car the next day at 8:45 after having wrestled four children into church clothes alone because your husband is at work and you’re staring down the barrel of three hours at church with four children, alone then you might find that your car won’t start because your daughter left something on and you’ll just load the baby into the stroller and tell the other kids to get their bikes and you’ll walk to church in your heels and you’ll still manage to only be five minutes late and make it in time for the sacrament (because you are that good).

But the next day when your husband is home with the other car, if the van has to actually be on in order to get it out of park, then you won’t be able to put it in neutral so that you can get it out of the one car carport and into a place where you can reach the battery, so you’ll have to very carefully pull the car into a spot that’s only about 6 inches wider than itself to get it next to the van and you’ll still have to hook two sets of jumper cables together (safety first) because the battery is, of course, on the side of the engine closest to the house and farthest from the open side of the carport.

If all of that happened, then you might wish that the car didn't actually have to be on to get it out of park.

I’m just saying…

Oh and if the above ever happened to you I would recommend that you find out what was left on and turn it off as soon as you realize that the battery’s dead because then there’s a chance that the battery won’t be so dead that jumping it doesn’t work (despite the very safe arrangement of your jumper cables) and it has to be replaced and you’ll take the old battery out and you’ll take it to Checker and you’ll tell the guy there that you need another battery just like it and he’ll ask you for the make and model of your car despite the fact that you know what kind of battery you need because THERE’S ONE SITTING ON THE COUNTER RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU and then he’ll ask you for your name and phone number (?????) and then your credit card will be denied and you’ll use the other one and $85.00 later you’ll carry the sixty pound battery back out to your car yourself while the dude from Checker tells you to have a nice day. Maybe it won’t make any difference since the battery was already so dead that the power locks didn’t work, but it could.