By Elissa Caterfino Mandel

As a passenger in a car, you don’t have too many responsibilities. One of the main ones is not to leave the driver without a key fob when you get out. It’s amazing how many times I’ve done just that; I’m blissfully unaware, as I wave to the person driving away — usually my husband — that I have doomed him to be marooned at the next stop. Clearly, it’s a flaw in my remote keyed car. When the car realizes the key is out of range, it should scream, “No, you idiot; put the key in the damn cup holder before you take another step.” At the very least the car ought to beep when someone is about to be stranded. No. The car, which buzzes like a screech owl on steroids when it comes within 12 inches of another car or a large insect, goes strangely silent when the key disappears. It’s like a sadistic game the car plays. Somewhere deep in the innards of its unfathomable computer system, the car must be keeping track. “63 times these owners have done the same stupid thing. Thank god I’m on a lease.”

This time when I got the call from my son, my head was in the sink at the hair salon. “I drove off without the key,” Brian said. He’d dropped me off with 45 minutes to wile away before his dentist appointment. When he turned off the car in the driveway at home, he realized he had no way to turn it back on.

I looked into my open bag and sure enough, the key, which I can never find except when I don’t need it, poked out from the inside pocket of my bag.

Our appointments had aligned. One car could serve us both with time to spare; he could get his teeth cleaned and return to get me with my clean hair and buffed nails and still get back to NYC for dinner. The driving schedule had seemed foolproof, but it didn’t account for the presence of two fools.

Brian’s next question was logical. He asked for the spare key. Oh, glory days when I had two keys to the car. The extra was lost long ago in someone’s pocket. Never mind that I will probably be charged for this missing key when I turn the car in in nine months. That’s bad enough. Now we were both stuck. What to do.

This was clearly a case for Dumb and Dumber — or Uber.

This raises an interesting question — who should take the blame for this key myopia? Is it the person who drives away without thinking or the bon vivant who runs from place to place with a car key she cannot possibly use without a corresponding car?

I’ll have to get back to you on that. Right now I’m in an Uber in between appointments, hoping to deliver the key to my son, so he can take the car to the dentist.