Why?
Well... remember riding in, say, your grandma's car in the 1990's? And how she didn't have a nifty button to push to roll the windows down, you had to use that horrible crank thing? Yeah, that was no fun, right? Worse, if you've ever had the misfortune of driving your grandma's car, and happened to want fast food, or cold beer (whichever is your choice intoxicant), you know those things require MEGA muscles! And if the person in front of you at the drive thru is smoking in their car and you want to roll the window up whenever its being down is not vital to your mission, it's doubly rotten.
Boy, it sure is a good thing they developed those nice little switches that make the windows go up and down BY THEMSELVES! No longer will we have tired arms at every drive thru, no longer will you bump a window crank getting something heavy out of the car, no, now there's a BUTTON! And better yet, in the driver's door, there's a button that LOCKS all the other windows, so your kids CAN'T even play with them! One of the best features, by far, about Clyde, the 1990 Honda Accord I inherited (funny enough, it did used to be my grandma's car) when I was sixteen, was those automatic windows... which honestly I didn't even expect in a car that old.
Surely, when I bought a NEW car... when I was lucky enough to get my hands on a 2010 vehicle IN 2011... it would have the same ingenious invention...
But wait...
...........
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AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
NOT THE CRANK WINDOWS!!!!
So at first I was like... "Eh, okay. I got this. I'm a big girl, strong arm muscles from carrying babies. I can do this."
Then I was like "Man, this is really irritating when the guy in front of me at McDonald's is smoking... but oh well, more exercise."
Then I met Ophlf, who you may remember from a previous post. Despite being "completely fictional"... Ophlf picked up RIGHT AWAY on those crank windows and what they meant.
The first time I was driving down the highway before I heard the faint whistling sound from the back seat. 'What is that?!' I thought. 'Was one of those creepy abandoned places I visited *actually* haunted, and the ghost decided to hitch a ride??' I glance in the back seat. Nope. Crank is suspciously out of place. Hmm. Maybe I bumped it. Surely Ophlf couldn't have figured that out AND reached it from his 5 point harness car seat!
The second time I was barely down the street because the window was WAY open and I was catching an icy breeze. Stop to close it. Notice that it's open just enough that, if he could reach the handle, Ophlf couldn't possibly have pushed it any further. Hmm. Maybe it's not the ghost.
Then a couple days ago... Ophlf did not want to get into the car. No, that's an understatement. Getting Ophlf in the car was like getting a cat into a bathtub full of water. Finally wrestling the little goober into his car seat, restraining his upper body at very least, Ophlf commenced kicking. Kicking everything in reach of his (long!) legs. I sat and observed. My first assumption had been right. Ophlf could not reach the window crank... with his hands... but the feet... right to the window crank.
The normal warning him not to do it again, applying consequences, etc, was completely ineffective. Ophlf was hell-bent on rolling that window down as far as he could. Usually when I wasn't looking, so that later, when I was driving alone and could not easily stop and roll the window back up (which requires a yoga-like reach into the back seat, because car manufacturers are dumb), I was stuck with a whistling and/or cold gap in my car's keep-the-outside-out-and-the-inside-in armor.
THIS DRIVES ME CRAZY.
I'll illustrate, because I feel like it, and so you can see how hilariously bad I am at MS paint.
Yeah. So here I am thinking I'm safe with a nice new car, and THEY'VE PUT THOSE INFURIATING CRANK WINDOWS ON IT! Combined with Ophlf, I'm doomed to an eternity of bad hair days and frantically fleeing said window. WHY, car manufacturers, WHY would you do this??
And then it dawns on me. They must not have children. To someone with no children, a crank window is merely a mild inconvenience. To someone with children, crank windows can be irritating. To someone driving around a child like Ophlf, these sort of windows MAKE YOU WANT TO GO EVEN MORE INSANE THAN YOU ALREADY ARE!
Ever determined, as I am, I was going to put an end to this window problem. I scoured the internet for some sort of device to child proof this type of window - because if they were still making cars with that feature, some smart parent had come up with a device to child-proof them.
Nope.
Nada.
Nothing.
The best I could come up with was a bunch of guys with beards explaining how to remove the window crank.
'That could work...' I thought. I didn't want to have to remove it, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
One video featured a fancy little tool, which the bearded man (I assume he has a beard, I'm not sure I ever actually saw his face, that's just how I picture him) assured you could be made at home or bought at a store. This almost made me laugh audibly. Broke as I am, and mechanically inept, there would be no tool for me... regardless of how seamlessly easy it made the process look. Take a look for yourself:
Lacking the fancy tool, I looked for another method. And I found one, a method using things I already had! This website advertised that all you needed was a flathead screwdriver and a rag!
I set to work immediately, even enlisting the help of best friend, best friend's roommate, and best friend's ex husband (don't ask). Not a one of us could get the stupid thing off with a rag. All we learned is how to break the window crank... which was not exactly what I was going for. Ophlf could've (and probably would've eventually) done that himself!
Ever determined, I showed the tool video to my brother, who, though he doesn't get enough respect from me (well, I'm his older sister, what do you expect?) is actually kind of a whiz with tools and various other science stuff.
He made me the tool.
I'll wait while you go back and read that sentence again.
HE MADE ME THE TOOL!
Not only that, he went out to my car in the freezing cold, and, though scraping up the door panel a little bit (although our previous attempts had done quite a bit of that, so it's hard to tell what's what), GOT THE STUPID THING OFF!
I almost hugged him.
Now the door panel by Ophlf's car seat looks like this instead:
HAH! Take THAT, three-year-old!
And now, despite the fact that *I* didn't actually do anything other than look up a video and tear a rag up, I'm feeling incredibly accomplished. The nap time saga may still rage on, but I WIN the crank window battle.
I think I deserve chocolate.
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