If my mom hadn’t told me her clicker story, I wouldn’t be telling mine.  

Hers is that she searched all over the parking lot for her car by clicking on the remote to get the horn to beep…but there was no answer.  She walked up and down the rows of the lot and clicked, becoming frustrated and then annoyed and finally panicked that her car had been stolen.  She pulled out her phone to call her grandson/my nephew to come and get her so they could report the car missing when she saw his car right in front of her and realized she had driven his car. 

My clicker incident occurred a few months back when I first started driving Sam’s Mustang every day after years of driving of my Durango.  The Durango, Sophie by name, is my baby, light silver just as I picked.  I love sitting up high first of all and the best part of is being able to lay down all the seats to drag home whatever I’ve found at a garage sale.  Sophie has transported bikes, dressers, futon frames, dog kennels, patio furniture and a treadmill, to name a few items.  Before they could drive, the kids did nothing but make fun of Sophie.  “Old lady car”, “stupid Durango”, and such.  Sam was the first to discover that Sophie has seat bellts for SEVEN people and learned to love her so much that at one point he traded me his Mustang to take Sophie back to the Marine base for a month or so.  I was happy to have her back for my shopping trips.  She knows the way to Ross and TJMaxx as well as she knows the way to the beaches in Southern California.  When Hannah started driving she swore she hated Sophie and had hissies every time I’d make her drive my Sophie, but lo and behold, after discovering she can comfortably ride all of her girl and guy friends along with the inordinate amount of things they seem to transport to school on their backs these days, her hissies are confined to when I need to “borrow” Sophie.  

In any event, I was still in I-drive-Sophie-my-Durango mindset when I came out of the mall one day and walked up to a light silver Durango and proceeded to click my remote. I walked all around it and clicked, not sure where the connection might be made, and clicked and clicked and clicked and…nothing.  People were passing me as they went to their own cars and one man commented it was probably the battery.  Having been through that once before I agreed and pulled on the door handle, knowing I would hear the long beep-beep-beep of the car arm but I had my key ready to unlock the door and jump in and start it so I wasn’t worried.  Until I looked at my key that was not the Durango key.  And then I saw the baby seat in the backseat of the Durango and I haven’t sported one of those in many, many moons,   And then I remembered…I was driving the Mustang…and the entire time the Durango that is NOT Sophie is sounding off…beep-beep-beep-intruder-beep-lady-beep-trying-beep-to-beep-steal-beep-me-beeeeep!  

As casually as I could I backed away as if I heard absolutely nothing and had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the mad Durango having a conniption as it went from beep to RRRROOOOHRR-RRRRROOOOHRRR-RRRROOOOHRRR and Wee-HOO, Wee-HOO trying to scare the pants off me or have me arrested by mall security or something.  Stupid Durango. 

A little further up I spotted the Mustang, clicked it open, got in and sped away just as the unnamed and very whiny Durango started another series of Wee-Hoos.  

You would think I’d have learned, right?

Next time I was actually driving the Durango but as I came out to the car I whipped out the  remote and clicked and clicked and clicked and…nothing.  I cautiously looked inside to confirm I actually did have Sophie this time and, yep, there was my daughter’s school bag so I felt a whole lot better.  As I again paced around the vehicle clicking a guy asked what I was doing and I told him the clicker wasn’t working and he held out his hand to try it and said, “Are you sure this is the right one?”

At that second I realized I had stuffed the Durango key in my jeans pocket, had been clicking with Mustang remote, and, very red-faced, said I was born a natural blonde but trying to recover.  

He gave me his business card and beneath his name in bold black letters was “Behavior Modification Counselor”!  He was grinning like a Cheshire cat.  

Redder-faced, I thanked him, used the correct clicker to get in, started the car and almost backed into my shopping cart that was left full of purchases behind Sophie but I saw it in the rear-view mirror in the nick of time.  Talk about embarrassed!  

We should boycott those sneaky, confusing clickers and just use car keys, but as I, along with my mother, have become adept at providing parking lot entertainment we might as well keep it up.