Locked

And now, I present the soon to be classic HamannEggs story, “The Time Diana Locked Luca In The Car.”

In the Denver Botanical Gardens parking garage, Diana found herself contemplating the sheer amount of crap you have to cart around when you’re out and about with two kids. She saw the stroller, the sippie cups, the purse, the diaper bag the snacks the kids the grappling hooks and the box of grenades and thought, “Too much.”

So Diana tossed the diaper bag into the trunk and closed it. Roughly 0.558 seconds after doing this, she realized her keys and cell phone were in the diaper bag, now locked in the car.

Oh yeah, and Luca.

For those of you who believe in heaven and hell, make no mistake you better be nice and pray a lot because if you go to hell when you die, it will be Lower Level 1 of the Denver Botanical Gardens parking garage.

Seeing the look of utter horror that crossed his mother’s face, Luca knew something was up and started to howl. Now keep in mind, we paid big money to have our windows tinted a year ago. So while Luca could see his mother’s panic, Diana couldn’t see into our car.

Diana tried to Get Luca to unlock the car from the inside, but he was strapped into his seat (stupid well constructed child safety products).

Luckily, a woman happened to be passing by and Diana begged her to use her cell phone. The woman said, “You should really invest in On-Star.” I’m not sure what happened next, but I think Diana murdered her.

The woman gave up her cell (since she was presumably murdered), but THERE WAS NO CELL SERVICE IN THE PARKING GARAGE. So Diana had to leave Luca and walk up to street level to make the call.

CUT to me in a plush editorial suite across town complaining about the quality of their free snacks. I saw a strange number on my cell and opted to answer it.

A voice that sounded like a robotic version of my wife was on the line. “Be quite and listen to me. This is an emergency…”

Roughly 30 seconds later I was screaming across Denver in a borrowed Mercedes SUV. I made it to the DBG and realized I had no idea where they were. So I slowly crawled around the garage hitting the unlock button on my key fob and swearing loudly.

Eventually, I ran across Elijah slumped over a stroller and Diana shout-singing the “Bob The Builder” theme song into our back window.

I popped the lock and Luca was extracted. He was soaking wet and covered in a hysteria induced rash. Diana covered him in smooches and he wept, “Push elevator buttons?”

Diana said, “Yes, sweetheart. You can push all the buttons you want.”

Elijah said, “But I WANT to push the elevator button.”