Once in a while they (high tech wizards) come up with a product that is truly not helpful. In fact it totally f-cks with your life.

Like a car key that I don’t have to insert into my ignition. I just throw my keys on the passenger seat, put my foot on the brake and press the start button and suddenly my car is running. It’s called a smart key.

Cool, right?

Except when it totally messes with me.

Like when I come back from a long drive with the girls late at night and the car is packed with crap that needs to be unloaded and I can’t find the keys. Now I know those magic keys are in the car somewhere because the car was running moments earlier.  But take heart, because only a mere 31 minutes later, I find them jammed between the passenger seat and the center console.

Oh sweet keys, I miss you dangling from the ignition.

And then today.

When Rick and I dropped the car off at a parking garage to take the girls to Cirque du Soleil (click here for my review of the mesmerizing acrobatic feats and $12 cotton candy).

We gather our stuff, get our ticket stub and walk about a block and half towards Madison Square Garden when we suddenly realize the garage guy is sprinting after us because Rick still has the car keys in his pocket.

Now even though my husband is the guy who recently lost an entire bag of apples on a hayride, I have to come to his defense.

1. We were so traumatized that the regular $24 parking fee had been inflated to $36 because of a “special event” at Madison Square Garden that we could think of nothing else -  certainly not leaving the keys with the parking attendant so he could actually move the car.

2. When parking at a garage, it’s very easy to accidentally take the smart key with you because it isn’t stuck in the ignition. And there is a still-pissed off parking attendant on the Upper East Side that will vouch that I recently did the very same thing.

And finally, the best part about having one of these magical keys is when I park my car, get out and actually leave the car running because I forget to press the button to turn the car off. This may be partially because I own a hybrid and it’s freakishly silent.

But this crazy smart key isn’t helping. And it’s definitely not making me any smarter.

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