Key fob is a word used to describe a key chain and several other similar items and devices. The word fob is believed to have originated from watch fobs, which existed as early as 1888. The fob refers to an ornament attached to a pocket-watch chain. Key chains, remote car starters, garage door openers, and keyless entry devices on hotel room doors are also called fobs, or key fobs.
—Webpedia
Driving home from a TobyMac concert (row 6, seat 14) late one night, I was about a mile from home on Congo Ferndale Road, which is way out—I mean way out, the Deliverance part of Ferndale, with nothing but woods for miles—when I saw a huge something on the road ahead. As I got closer, I realized it was a deer someone had hit and killed.
Naturally, my first thought was to ask God to let it run free and happy on my property in heaven, where I would gladly take care of it when I got home. My next thoughts were not as kind. I wondered what horrible human being would just leave it in the middle of the road. Didn’t they consider that another driver might run into the carcass? It could wreck a vehicle or maybe even send it careening into a ditch while the driver tried to swerve.
I turned around and went back. I stopped, angling my car to the left so the headlights would shine on the deer lying in the opposite lane. My plan was to drag the poor creature off the road.
I climbed out and carefully set the door against my still-running car—just enough to let it click but not close. I walked toward the deer and noticed a truck coming from the other direction. Applying more than a little effort, I grabbed a hoof and lugged the poor creature into the ditch, waved and smiled at the truck, and walked back to my car.
Feeling good about my selfless deed, I reached down and pulled on the door handle. It was locked. My headlights were still shining brightly. The inside lights were still on. My cell phone was snugly secure in the passenger seat. The car was idling smoothly. But somehow, my driver’s door had locked itself behind me. All the doors were locked.
I went into mild shock.
I tried both driver’s-side doors. Locked.
The truck pulled up, and the lady inside rolled down her window. I said, “The doors locked.” She just looked at me. I repeated, trying in vain to hide the terror in my voice, “The doors locked all by themselves. I live just on the other side of Colonel Glenn. If you could just drive me to my house, I have an extra fob there, and I can get it unlocked.”
She just said, “Oh, uh …”
I don’t know why she seemed hesitant—we were just out there by ourselves shortly after midnight in The Blair Witch Project.
I said, “Look, I just left a TobyMac concert—row 6, seat 14, by the way. I’m a Christian. I love the Lord. I would never hurt you.”
I guess she felt bad and had, in fact, watched the whole dragging-the-dead-deer thing transpire. Although it was after midnight and no one was on the road, I don’t think I looked all that menacing. I had all my teeth. So she let me get in her truck.
She said, “Well, do you live with someone?”
I realized at that point she did not intend to drive me back to my car. I told her I would wake up my neighbor and have him drive me to my car.
As she turned her truck onto my drive, I glanced to the right and saw Jeremiah, my neighbor, working in his garage. While rummaging in his tool chest, he glanced up to see the unknown truck pulling into my driveway. Probably he wondered who would have been arriving at that hour. He might’ve even felt a moment of alarm for the safety of his family and his parents. Both his parents’ house and mine were at the end of the long drive, a length of two acres away from the road, way back in the woods.
As we got to my house, I thanked the lady and jumped out of her truck. She turned the truck around and sped away. I ran to the house, which, like my car, was also locked. But I remembered the sliding glass door by the front door was never locked. It was nearly impossible to slide open. I managed to maneuver it enough to wedge myself through; push away all the dogs, who were scrambling to get outside since they had been locked in the house for the past seven hours; grab the extra fob; and run back across the two acres of dirt driveway to Jeremiah’s house. He was still standing by the garage window.
I feel certain Jeremiah was a little startled when he saw a human standing at his window at midnight, waving at him. He opened the garage door, and I told him what had happened.
“My car is sitting in the middle of the road, locked, with the inside lights on, headlights on bright. My phone is on the front seat. And the car is running.”
He said, “What were you doing out of your car at midnight and locking the door?”
I was beginning to sweat. “We need to hurry! Just drive me up there. I’ll tell you on the way.”
He was unimpressed with my emotional collapse and said, “Okay. But come look at what I’m doing.”
With more than a little angst, I toured the man cave he was building with a new deck. I said, “That’s so cool. But if anyone drives up Congo Ferndale right now at midnight and sees a car sitting there locked, running, with the inside lights on, the headlights on bright, and a cell phone on the front seat, idling out in the middle of Sasquatchville, they’re going to break a window and steal it or at the very least assume foul play has recently transpired and call the cops. We gotta go.”
So we jumped into his truck with his dog, Pearl, and headed to the car. When we got there, Jeremiah turned his lights on bright to survey the situation better and said, “The lights are on. It’s still running.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m fully aware of that. Wait here so I can make sure the battery in this fob isn’t dead.”
The battery in the fob was dead.
I went to the car and pressed the unlock button several times, but to no avail. I frantically shook the fob up and down like an old-time mercury-filled thermometer, hoping I could squeeze one last drop of energy back into the ancient battery, which was as dead as the animal I’d pulled into the ditch earlier.
At least internally, and quite possibly externally, I panicked. “This is not happening. This cannot be happening. No, no, no, no!”
I looked back toward Jeremiah in his truck with his dog, Pearl. I couldn’t see him, because I was looking directly into his headlights. I’m reasonably sure I mouthed something toward those headlights that I’m not particularly proud of right now.
He jumped out of the truck and came up to my car. I said, “The fob is dead. It’s really dead. I’m not sure what to do now. I may have to use your phone to call my insurance agent, who will call a locksmith. You don’t have to wait around. It’ll probably take them a while to get here, so I’ll just wait here by the car. Although I fully expect to hear a banjo start playing somewhere in the woods as soon as you drive off.”
Years earlier, when I’d worked as a server at a Nashville restaurant, people would ask for something weird, and there was no way I could respond without making them look like a total moron in front of their friends. For example, occasionally, someone would ask for a Caesar salad with Thousand Island dressing. This was one of those moments. There was no way Jeremiah could respond to the situation without me looking like a complete bonehead. He pointed to a small hole just under the car door handle and said, “Um, well, you do know that fob has an actual key attached to the end of it, right?”
“Oh.”
