Dude, Where's My Car?

Here's a little cautionary tale for youse all, though I'm not yet sure what the lesson is. I think it has something to do with drunk driving, but not really as no one was harmed in the making of this story.

Went to happy hour with co-workers on Friday night--to Ludwig's AGAIN and had four tall beers in about fifteen minutes. Left there to go meet Shawn and friends at the Fishtown house and drank another beer. Decided that I must leave that instant and demanded my car keys from Shawn. Drove home and could not find a parking space (in the one loop I made) and so parked the car somewhat illegally in the free municipal lot between 7th and 8th street off Christian. Walked to my apartment, devoured fistfuls of cereal straight from the box, and went to bed. Shawn arrived home a few hours later, but I barely noticed.

The next morning, Shawn left to get started on the house and Liz delivered about 25 boxes for him to use when he packs, which I'm guessing will happen about 15 minutes before the movers arrive. She and I drove over to the municipal lot to pick up my car which was, in fact, gone. Liz said, Are you sure you parked here? I was pretty sure--89.5 % sure. We sat in her car, using up all her gasoline while I called six different numbers trying to locate where my car had been towed. You know what they authorities ask you if you're trying to locate your possibly towed car? They will request your license plate number. I don't know about you, but this is not something I've memorized like say, my phone number. Then they'll pretend not to be able to look for your car without the license plate number, but that is not true. You can also tell them the make and model and they can search that way, though they don't want to. So, we went through this process about six times and no one could find my car, though I feel bad for the guy on 43rd street whose silver Mazda was towed at 12:38 AM. I started to consider the other option--that my car had been stolen. Truthfully, I prefered the later option as it would mean I wouldn't have to come up with $300 cash to pay towing fees. Finally, Liz had the brilliant idea to call Shawn and tell him what was going on. She called him and told him the situation and he said, Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that I moved the car last night.

There are several lessons to be learned from this story:

1. Don't park illegally in municipal lot after driving home from the bar.
2. Memorize your license plate number in case your car turns up missing.
3. Do not give your partner access to car keys as s/he may forget to tell you that s/he has relocated the car to a different spot in the middle of the night b/c s/he had a substance in the car s/he wanted to get.

And they all lived happily ever after...

Comments

Liz said…
Oh, I love that story. I love that the idea that Shawn might have moved the car never even crossed our minds. Not for a second. Nope.
Anonymous said…
hey...don't make light of cars being stolen! my car was stolen 3 weeks ago from right in front of my house in the Graduate Hospital area. Too bad it got recovered in Harrisburg. Some punks just took it for a little drive to the country. Besides the ignition being totally torn apart the only other thing missing from my car is my GLDP umbrella! Donate Life my friends! blech.
Lara
Anonymous said…
hey...don't make light of cars being stolen! my car was stolen 3 weeks ago from right in front of my house in the Graduate Hospital area. Too bad it got recovered in Harrisburg. Some punks just took it for a little drive to the country. Besides the ignition being totally torn apart the only other thing missing from my car is my GLDP umbrella! Donate Life my friends! blech.
Lara
Aimee said…
i'm sorry Lara! I was actually thinking about you when all this happened.
at least you got your car back!

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