Tonight I found my car yet again with a dead battery. This has become a common trend in Philly, and usually I end up calling AAA, but this time I had some friends around, so I asked one of them to help me out. But first I had to get the jumper cables out of my trunk. The problem was, I couldn't open up my trunk because there is no physical knob, only a button that is run by an electrical signal, which obviously doesn't work when your battery is dead. So I reverted back to some knowledge I had gained in high school.
See, one random night during my junior year of high school I was hanging out with my girlfriend, and I devised the brilliant plan to see if we could both fit into my trunk at the same time - with it closed, naturally. First, I tested it myself. What I figured out in this experiment is that there is usually some small panel or hole on the inside of the door of the trunk with a lever or wire inside of it that, upon being pulled, releases the latch. So essentially, there is a way to escape on your own from inside a closed car trunk. With this vital knowledge acquired, my girlfriend and I, somewhat confident we could get out (or at least I was confident), attempted to complete our mission. First I got in, and then she crawled in after me. We assumed a semi spoon-like position, with her as the little spoon. Keep in mind, this was the trunk of a 2-door coupe, so there wasn't a lot of room, but somehow we managed to squeeze in and shut the door! I was pretty excited it actually worked, and there is no horror story about us getting stuck in the trunk. I found my hole in the paneling and released the trunk latch. Easy as pie.
This pointless knowledge I had gained proved itself surprisingly useful today during my dilemma. I simply crawled over the seats into the trunk of my hatchback, located a suspicious looking snap-in panel, removed it, and found a small lever. Sure enough, the trunk popped open. Before I knew it, I had my jumper cables out and was ready to start my car. And now all is well because I challenged my high school girlfriend to squish into a trunk with me. Ain't life grand!
I think I'm going to coin the phrase "trunk-spoon." I have no idea when I would actually use it though. Ideas?
2 comments:
If your jumper cables were in the trunk of your car, and you could access your trunk by climbing over the seats... Am I missing something? I'm really confused about this.
As for trunk-spooning, I highly suggest your wedding night. It would be the American version of a common Hmong practice. Allow me to explain:
The Hmong who live in the rural mountains of Southeast Asia live with large extended families in small, humble abodes. Everyone sleeps on the floor of the one-room dwelling. The only place to find privacy is a small, broom-closet-sized "room" where newlyweds are allowed to sleep together for the first few months of their matrimony. After that, they take up a space on the floor in the main room with everyone else. (Credit: Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed)
Yes, I can see how this might cause confusion. I considered explaining it in my original post, but didn't think it was essential to the story. I may have been wrong.
Anyway, the reason I still needed to pop the back door was that I needed to lift the flooring of the trunk in order to get to the compartment where the spare tire was, which also houses my jumper cables. Lifting this flooring would be near to impossible from behind the seats, due to your body position and the angle of the trunk door. It may be doable after a lot of awkward contorting, but using my learnings from the trunk-spooning incident was much easier. And makes for a better story :-)
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