<p>So yesterday S2 comes into the house after school and says “you’ll never believe what S1 did?” I’m thinking to myself “great what did he manage to do 5 days before the last day of his high school career?” After school S1 could not find his car keys and asked S2 to go out to the vehicle in the school parking lot to see if he had locked them in the vehicle (they both have a set of keys). Not only had he left them in the vehicle, but the vehicle was running ~ and had been since open period at 11:30 am.</p>
<p>I’m still trying to wrap my mind around what you could possibly be doing that you would not only forget to take the keys out of the vehicle, but to not even turn the vehicle off! (and this from a kid who managed to garner a full-ride).</p>
<p>That is hysterical! My D1 has done some bonehead things in the car (I am still shocked that they gave her a driver’s license) but I think your S1 wins the prize!</p>
<p>My kids always parked in the same spot in the HS lot. I’d have to wonder if some prankster friend (perhaps the one who always parks next to S) noticed the keys in the ignition and started up the car and locked it so no harm would come from having it running.</p>
<p>Schmoomcgoo - I never thought of that! They did say it burned through a quarter of a tank of gas so it had to have been running for quite awhile. (Thank goodness the gas mileage while in idle is quite a bit higher than while driving down the highway!)</p>
<p>Your S1 is like my S1, a little bit of ‘absent-minded professor’ in him. </p>
<p>The only difference is that if my S1 asked my S2 to go out to the car to check on his keys - S2 would have said no and probably would have told S1 where he could stick his keys. ;)</p>
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<p>How old a car is it? Most cars (for many years now) don’t allow you to lock the driver’s door if the key is in the ignition.</p>
<p>ctyankee - I was actually quite impressed that S2 did go out and check. He is 5 inches taller and 50 lbs heavier so he really didn’t have to do what S1 wanted. He probably wanted to get home and S1 told him they couldn’t go until they found the keys.</p>
<p>The ‘absent-minded professor’ trait definitely came from his father. They have a serious inability to multi-task. There is no point saying anything to either one of them when you can see the wheels turning - neither one of them will hear a word I say.</p>
<p>I just read an article in the New York Times about Elena Kagan, the new nominee to the supreme court. Apparently she left her car running all night long on at least one occasion, so as far as the absent minded professor type your son is in good company.</p>
<p>My husband runs a division of a home building company. One night I had a phone call from one of the homeowners that it was 9 pm and one of the bulldozers was still running with no driver in site. I knew the sub whose dozer it would be and had to get the telephone operator to break into a phone conversation to get him the message. The sub told me he’d fire the person that left the machine running … but he’d done it himself!</p>
<p>ctyankee - I don’t think the doors were actually locked when S2 went out to check. He’s darn lucky someone didn’t get in and take it for a ride.</p>
<p>My take on absent-mindedness with intellectually gifted people is that it’s often a function of having an internal processor that runs on warp speed. While most people are thinking through mundane tasks as they’re performing them, intellectually gifted people may be mentally operating ahead, constructing logical rationales for the points they want to make in the class or meeting in which they’re about to participate. The mundane task may be underperformed, but they typically have a leg up in the subsequent debate on the important issue.</p>
<p>Glad nothing bad happened to the car! My D and I came home one evening and H’s car was not in the driveway. We walked in and he was happily sitting in the office on the computer. We asked where his car was and he said in the driveway. Uh, no, try again. Apparently he came home, pulled into the driveway to run in and get something and then was planning to leave again. The phone rang, it was his mom, blah, blah, blah…he forgot the car was running in the driveway. Apparently some kids took it joy riding (really, how much joy riding can you do in an old minivan!) but we did get it back a couple of weeks later when it was found abandoned in few streets over. Let’s just say the joy riding kids were NOT good drivers.</p>
<p>OK - I will confess, I have left my car running outside my house for about 12 hours. Sad thing is that afterwards, at least 2 neighbors told me they noticed it but neither knocked on my door!! And I dont have the absent-minded professor excuse - my mind works on speeds that aren’t close to warp…</p>
<p>I’ve done one nearly as stupid (or more stupid perhaps).</p>
<p>I drove in the middle of the night (late… 2 am-ish) without my lights on, and the whole time wondered why I couldn’t see anything. This was until I got pulled over. I still didn’t realize it until the police officer told me I didn’t have my lights on. </p>
<p>I don’t think I get to claim the mind on warp speed thing unfortunately, because I was actually wondering the whole time I was driving why it was so hard to see.</p>
<p>I did the same thing when I was a senior in High school. At a Burger King. I had a car full of friends, I was talking and when we got out of the car I closed the door behind me and kept walking. Ate lunch. Couldn’t find my keys. Went out to the car only to find it running. I had a 73 Cutlass Sport that got 7 miles per gallon. Luckily someone else had a coat hanger in their car & we managed to unlock it. Then I had to get gas to make it back home. Oops :)</p>
<p>Well, speaking of cars, Mrs. ctyankee is in a battle of some sorts with the garage door. Mind you, we don’t have the narrow 8 foot wide doors, we have the 9 foot wide doors. Even so, she has:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Royally scraped up the side of her car exiting the garage. </p></li>
<li><p>Braked too late and smashed into the closed door upon arrival home. </p></li>
<li><p>Smashed into the closed garage door when trying to leave the garage. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Fortunately, she has many great qualities that make up for things - including tolerating me.</p>
<p>These stories make me feel so much better. I’m feeling good that we weren’t having him take a car to college after this incident. I could see him parking it on campus somewhere and not remembering where that somewhere was. We would have to wait until the end of the year and look at all of the lots until we found the one with a car still in it.</p>
<p>i am generally a good driver but a couple of times i have made very stupid mistakes. i think i have left my car running at school when i was in a hurry. one time i scraped my moms durango against the side of the garage door frame. the car was very wide and our garage was packed with stuff. i scraped it really bad though, like there were some big whites scrapes on the side and the bumper got pulled off (it was when the bumper came off that i realized i had hit the side). at first i just pushed the bumper back on and didnt notice the white marks, so i didnt say anything to my mom. then she found it and was mad i didnt tell her. but i had thought i had fixed the one problem, and she didnt believe that i didnt notice the rest of the damage even though i wasnt lying.</p>
<p>I did the same thing as your son. Only I did it in the middle of a “questionable” neighborhood where I was doing some shopping. There was a specialty store that carried something I wanted that was not available elsewhere. Coming back to the car which was parked on a very busy street, I noticed some other shops with things that interested me so I languidly browsed through a number of stores. I was horrified to return to my unlocked car with the key in the ignition and the car running.</p>