Dumb, or Dumber

Pleased with the purchase of a new second hand car, I drove  it 1000 kms home.  It was as smooth as a sewing machine and the power was phenomenal.  I’d gone up from a 2.2 to a 2.4.  I particularly enjoyed the electric windows – a feature I never wanted in a vehicle because I always felt that it was just something else which could go wrong, but there’s nothing like being able to open the passenger window while you’re on the road to get a cross-flow of air.  Previously, I’d have to pull over, lean awkwardly across and wind the window down.  If it started then to rain, I would have to reverse the process, so I’m enjoying these windows.

Eventually at home I end up attending a party at which some of the guests had no ride home, so I filled the car up with them and dropped them off on the way.  Unbeknowns to me, one had opened a rear window by just a few centimetres and I didn’t notice for a couple of days until finally I recognised the wind noise whooshing past when my own window was closed. I needed to close it, especially since it was coming night, and I was parked outside, and rain threatened.

Well, I looked at the electric window controls on the driver’s door.  Definitely only two buttons, one for driver and one for front passenger.  I checked several times because there are other buttons.  Then I hopped into the rear passenger seat but there were no buttons back there at all.  So I got the manual out, and it definitely showed that there should be four buttons meaning that I should have been able to close the windows from the front.  I looked again in the back, and then in the front as slowly I began to formulate the reasons for the missing buttons.

The scenarios are just too wild to have been even close to true – such as, the dealer must have removed them (but then where are the holes?).  By now I’ve invested twenty minutes and I’m no closer to getting the window closed and cannot figure out how my guest did it.  Falling back on the old maxim, when it really won’t work, kick it, I determined to close the window somehow so I could leave the car in the rain and I went round to the passenger door, opened it and gripped it between my knees, put both hands together one either side of the window and pushed up.

Sure enough the window closed, and as it did, I noticed a handle turning lower down on the door.

©Theresa Sjoquist