Exciting trip to the airport

About midnight on Friday night I needed to take someone to the airport. This is not unusual since most international flights in/out of our city arrive and take off between midnight and 4 am.

We loaded the suitcases into the car and drove uneventfully to the airport, arriving at the international departure area. We uneventfully unloaded said suitcases and said goodbye to the departing person. And then the eventfull-ness began.

I walked around to the driver’s door of the car, which I had left running since we were only dropping the person off which should take a minute or two at the most. To my complete shock and horror the driver’s door was locked, with the keys obviously inside the ignition since it was still running.

This began a frantic walk around the car checking every possible way into the car, all of which were locked securely. Since we were stopped in the middle of the main traffic lane I knew it would be not more than another minute before we began attracting unwanted attention by the dozens of traffic policemen who were standing nearby shooing people along the driveway area.

I began to mentally prepare myself to throw an elbow through one of the windows (I chose the elbow since I assumed it would hurt less, give me good leverage and was less likely to do major damage than a hand or my head would sustain) to break in so we could get going. I saw no other way out of the situation at the time.

Then out of the crowd comes an average Indian man. There was nothing unusual about him. He walked over to the door, saw my predicament and quickly went into action. He grabbed a pen from one of the now approaching traffic policemen and used the cap to pry off the molding on the top edge of the door where the window meets the main part of the door. He had it off within seconds.

He then proceeded to shove this molding down inside the door between the glass and the door, wriggling it around with a deftness that was impressive. This was his version of a slim-jim. About 3-5 seconds later I heard the most beautiful sound – “Cachunk!” as the door locks released allowing me entry back into my car.

I thanked him for his help, more than happy to pay to replace the now malformed window molding rather than face the ire of the traffic police and their questions. From the time this man appeared until he blended back into the crowd again was not more than about 30 seconds I think, but he had helped me immeasurably. I quickly got in the car with my friend who had come with me and we made our way home . . . . uneventfully.

Note to self – the remote locking system automatically locks ALL doors as soon as the driver’s door is closed when the car’s engine is left running. Be careful.