We decided we'd do the alternate - We had to go to town to get our flu shots anyway so it was not too much out of the way to take the laundry in, leave it to be washed and folded and pick it up later. So we loaded it into the truck.
It's been cold and the truck hadn't been started in several days so it made a couple of complaining noises about being neglected. The battery doesn't charge much during my short runs to town. Occasionally I will run it up the highway a few miles and back, just to charge the battery. When we got to the laundry we decided we'd leave the truck running for the four or five minutes it would take us inside, just to charge the battery. So we locked the doors with the engine running. Now you are thinking - they must have forgotten that they need the keys to unlock the truck - but we had the second set with us, so no problem there.
We did our laundry deal and came out. Tony clicked his remote and no joy. He clicked again. We shook it and begged it and then thought, "Dummies! Just open the door with the key!" We quickly discovered that the keys we have don't fit the door lock! Oh great. Now we have a locked, running truck and no way to get into it.
Our truck has a canopy. The back window of the cab and the front window of the canopy both slide open, but are far too small for Tony to get through, so I climbed into the truck bed and crawled on my belly like a snake over boxes of books, lawn furniture, umbrellas, bird seed, and misc. flotsam. The windows were both snowed in and frozen into position. I wedged a handle (broom, umbrella?) into the canopy window and forced it part way open. Did the same with the cab window. An opening maybe 14" square.
Tried to climb in with one leg first, but I didn't have room to fold over. (i.e. read this as "biggus buttus") Tried with both feet first, couldn't get flat enough ("too much roundus").
I finally scrabbled around until I was facing the windows and dove through head first. I pushed the console forward, got my shoulders through one at a time, wedged my upper half through the keyhole-sized space and into the cab.
There for a minute I thought I might be permanently stuck top half in the cab and bottom half in the canopy. Tony reassured me by reminding me that the ambulance station is right across the street. Some reassurance. I can see it now. Emergency measures might have included cutting off my clothes, greasing me down with a pound of Tenderflake Lard, and a great deal of pushing and shoving. Some enterprising citizen would have called CNN. I'd have made the 11:00 news, under the headline, "Elderly Woman Caught in Compromising Position While Breaking Into Truck". (Why is it that you are called "Elderly" by the media once you hit 50?)
It was something like -7 with a brisk wind and I was wringing wet under my layers. I had to sit and chant Nam Myoho Renge Kyo for a bit to to kill the will to kill the FORD by bashing in the dashboard. I unlocked the passenger door and let my shivering husband inside. We tested his clicker once we got to the mall, and it snapped the locks locked and unlocked as cheerfully as a cricket's chirp. Then I just wanted to bash the clicker. Or perhaps smack the guy who replaced the doors after the previous owner's deer mishap, and didn't rekey them! (We'd never tried the keys before - who knew they didn't fit?)
I said to Tony that afterwards this would be something we'd laugh about. Later I discovered that the truck had gotten in a few licks I'd been unaware of at the time. I have bruises from shoulder to shin-bone. Nothing major, just quarter-sized blue patches dotted wherever the truck took exception to my intrusion. It put up a pretty good fight! I'll wait to laugh till the bruises fade.
I don't think stealing trucks is my calling in life. I'll take up giving myself root canals instead.
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