Spooked Van?

Several years ago, my mode of transportation was a van. It was a typical car-pool vehicle, especially for moms who hold the title of “transportation director” for their families.

Late one afternoon, daughter Tiffany and I were in the van, heading to a church youth activity, when we found ourselves in a sudden thunderstorm. There were booming blasts of thunder and bright, electrifying bolts of lightning. As the lightning zig-zagged down from the sky, the bolts seemed to hit the ground.

And then I heard the click of the door locks in the van. I asked Tiffany why she unlocked the doors; she replied that she hadn’t.

A few minutes later the door locks clicked again. This happened several times; the locks went up, the locks went down.

Maybe lightning struck my van, causing a problem with the door locking mechanism only. I don’t know. Soon it stopped, or so I thought. We went home and called it a day.

By the next morning, the storm and the door locks were no longer on my mind.

Until I went outside to get into the van. As I walked to the driver’s side door, I heard the doors unlock. I reached for the door handle but the doors locked themselves before I could open the door.

Getting in and out of the van remained a challenge: I never knew when the doors would lock themselves. Fortunately, I was never locked out more than several times a day, and those times were not long-lasting.

There was never a need to lock the doors. Or perhaps there was a need but just no use to do so – because the doors would unlock themselves. It didn’t matter whether I had a laptop computer or gifts or anything else inside; I could not lock the doors and have them remain locked.

As Christmas holidays approached and as I spent more time shopping, I worried about having packages in an unlocked, parked van. My dad said not to worry about it. He said if someone intended to try to break in and steal packages but heard the doors start locking and unlocking, the person would either think there was someone inside the van or that the van was “spooked,” which, no doubt, would cause the would-be thief to turn and run away as fast as possible.

Maybe that worked. Nothing was ever stolen from inside the vehicle.

There are days when I really miss that van. It brought a whole new meaning to the term “automatic door locks.”