Dear Buick Park Avenue Ultra,

Who do you think you are and what do you think you’re doing? What kind of sicko sense of humor do you possess that makes you think it’s funny to trap old people inside their brand-new luxury car? It doesn’t matter that they themselves pushed (or failed to push) one of your many, many buttons. The result was that they were trapped inside their own car in their own driveway in the middle of the day. Not funny!

Just because they fail to understand the concept of keyless entry and respond to gadgetry in general by freezing like deer caught in headlights shouldn’t make them the butt of anyone’s jokes. Shame on you!

Their old Buick Skylark never behaved this way. It aged along with them—its tires grew bald and its wheels went out of alignment. It never pulled anything. Yes, it gradually lost its youthful suppleness, until one day the turn signal snapped off in my mother’s hand, giving her the option of endless left-hand turns. But did the Skylark do this on purpose? No, it did not. Fortunately, my mother was able to fix this problem herself, using a Popsicle stick she fetched out of the garbage can and duct-taped to the turn signal’s stump.

However, when you, Buick Park Avenue Ultra, autolocked the doors around my parents without so much as a “How do you do?,” what practical do-it-yourself options were they left with? Rolling down the windows and crawling out? They couldn’t lower the windows, because there are no handles, only little buttons with international iconography, which we all know is so very useful! *&%$#@!!!! What do you think that means, smarty-pants?

I suppose they could have used their cellular phone to dial 911, but how stupid would that have sounded? And, in any case, they do not know how to use their cellular phone, because it, too, has myriad tiny buttons with 3-point type and weird icons.

So please remember that you are only as good as the people who own you, and do not get uppity because you have that stupid Park Avenue crap in your name. The name Park Avenue Ultra is a pathetic marketing ploy to get people to think you are as good as a Cadillac, Mercedes, or BMW. Sorry: Wrong!

Remember, you are not the star in some Twilight Zone episode. You are a car—a vehicle for the transportation of human beings from one location to another—and you should behave responsibly and accordingly. No more funny business!

Sincerely,
Jeanne Shoemaker