Here is another marvel
of technology for which I’m not ready: the hands-free, smart car key.

Except it’s not really a key, it’s a device like a credit card or key fob that you carry in your pocket or purse. It sends out a signal when you approach your locked car, and when you grasp the handle, the door pops open. Then, when you climb inside, you just press a starter button and away you go. Of course, if you lose this miracle device, you will have to open your car with a chainsaw and start it with dynamite.

Frankly, I was happier with the way cars used to work. For example, sometimes I have to park my car far away from my house, and sometimes in summer I forget to hit the button that rolls up the windows. Then up comes a storm and out I dash (and I don’t dash as well as I once did). And I reach the car and I don’t have the key and the windows won’t move without it. Then I long for the days when you cranked windows and when keys were mainly for starting. Although, with an old enough car, you could easily (and illegally) start it with a piece of tinfoil and a quarter, or a screwdriver. And
when you locked your car with the keys inside, as I sometimes do despite the beeping,
you could get the damn thing open with a coat hanger.

However, the age of the remote is upon us, and there is no turning back. I am a laggard,
but even I have remotes scattered around the house. Scattered being the key word, for the first law of remotes is this: the more you need a remote, the harder it is to find. No, I don’t have a remote or a smart key to open my car; only a handful of keys. But I have the necessary TV remotes, and those for the VCR and DVD and radio. Then there’s one for the ceiling fan in my strangely high living room. It runs on old-fashioned batteries and works maybe one out of five times. I’d be better off with a small boy on a long pole.

I have a special remote that controls some outside spotlights, but I seem to have lost it. I have a remote opener for the boathouse door at the cottage. It works perhaps half the time and you can recognize my boathouse by the prow-shaped dents in the door.

I do know that remotes are useful, and a couple of years ago when I got an automatic garage door, I was immensely pleased with the ease of access, for I have owned many garages but they all were opened by hand and required much tugging. (Not that I used them for the car; too much junk inside for that.)

Now that I live in a truly cold climate, I put the car in the garage. When I first got my remote, I carried it in my pocket, and for the first few days the house was filled with the sound of the garage door opening and closing every time I shifted my position. Then I realized the best place for the remote was in the car and I clipped it to the sun visor. And for a while, everything went well.

Then the clip broke and I put it on the passenger seat and then the puppy chewed it, opening and shutting the door with every bite. She swallowed most of it and I tried working the door by pointing the dog at it and squeezing her stomach. No, that didn’t work, and so I had to get the spare remote.

Which I lost in a matter or hours.

So I went though the house and gathered a shopping bag full of remotes and took them outside and pointed them at the garage door, pushing their buttons one by one. The ceiling fan turned on inside, and I think one TV remote turned on the outside spotlights.
The VCR went into erase mode and the microwave simply broke down. And nothing would work the garage door.

At the moment, I have put the door on manual opening, which I did by unplugging the whole automatic opening system. But winter is coming, so I have to go out and find another garage door remote.

@page_break@Except I think there’s a password or code programmed into the system — and, no, I don’t know what it is. Which is no surprise. IE