You can have sanity or children, but you can’t have both. One can argue I gave up on sanity long before my children but nevertheless, they’ve cemented that decision every day since.

Make no mistake, I wouldn’t trade them for the world and I love them to death, but I had no idea just how much writing material they would eventually give me. (Keep it up kids, these articles are gonna pay for your first car.)

Normally my eldest brings me more trials than my youngest, simply because he is the more experienced mastermind and the other one tends to follow like a moth to a flame. However, I had a rare look at my youngest child’s proclivity for conceiving mischief when we were visiting my father. 

We were outside looking at the construction work at my new house and the air was a bit chilly. Thinking of my son, I decided to place him comfortably in his car seat in the back of my truck where it was warm. I opted to forgo the seatbelt, as I didn’t know if I would be getting him back out in a few minutes as I was still talking to my dad. 

As we stood outside the truck pointing and talking about the construction, we suddenly heard a clicking noise from the cab of the truck. We both turned to ascertain the source of this suspicious clamor, and we spied my two-year-old sitting gleefully in the driver’s seat. 

Now the truck was not on, but my keys were sitting on the center dash. My son was laughing as he proceeded to press all of the various buttons on my door, many of which simply made the seat move forward and backward—oh yes, and of course the lock button. 

Funny thing about the lock button in my truck: it will engage the locks, but it will not unlock the very same locks using the door-unlock button for security measures. 

No no, it couldn’t be as easy as hitting the unlock button. Unfortunately at the time, I had forgotten about this detail as I have only locked myself out of this particular vehicle once. So whilst my son was in a playful mood, we proceeded to jokingly prompt him to hit all the buttons again, hoping to quickly open the door the moment the lock was disengaged. It baffled us for a short time why when he would hit that button it wouldn’t appear to function, but would re-lock the doors and continue to slide the driver’s chair forward and backward like a carnival ride for my obliviously pleased toddler.

Remembering this security measure after about 20 minutes of begging and repeatedly pointing and re-phrasing directions (which we tired of quickly), I changed tactics and tried to get him to hit the unlock button on my key fob. 

Any other day, he would be drawn to my keys, which I keep clipped on my belt loop. Today, however, after casually picking the keys up, he dropped them on the floor and was entirely uninterested in trying to retrieve them.

As it would happen, I do not own a spare key to this truck, although that is now on my to-do list, and I had no other recourse short of damaging the truck or attempting a break-in. So as not to expose the secrets of how to circumnavigate my security, I won’t share the details of how I got the truck open, but the bottom line is that I didn’t do it alone. While tools and wires were involved, they ultimately served more as a direction for my son to know what needed doing to finally unlock the door for us. 

The game was fun while it lasted for the young farmer, but he was ready to be done by the time we got it sorted.

The way out here, your kids are bound to lock you out of the vehicle one day. I suggest you invest in a strong sense of patience and very possibly a spare key to keep in a secret spot outside the cab. Praise God it all worked out and my son had a fun time, as opposed to his frantic father and grandfather, who both played it cool as far as he knows.