Skip to main content

Grand Theft Auto

Picture this....you dash into the grocery store to grab a few needed items, run out in a hurry, unlock the van door with your clicker-thingy, hop in as you toss the bag into the passenger seat next to you and attempt to insert the key into the ignition. The key doesn't fit. WEIRD. You take a quick glance around and realize your groceries are sitting on top of some papers that you don't remember leaving in the passenger seat. You glance behind you quickly, only to realize there is a car seat in the back, and your kids haven't sat in a car seat for several years. It suddenly dawns on you that you are in the twilight zone....No, you are in the wrong vehicle.

That actually happened to me today. The strange thing is, it is the second time it has happened to me in the last four years since I bought my van. When we originally shopped around for a van, my first one ever, I had only a couple of requirements. One was that we had to have a passenger door on each side of the van so each kid could get in their respective side. The second was that the passenger seats had to be bucket seats rather than a bench. The third, not a requirement until I saw it, but I wanted the beautiful 'Patriot Blue' one sitting in the lot. At the time the color seemed unique. Since I drove it out of the lot, I realized myself and every other person owning a 2002 Dodge Grand Caravan Sport had fallen in love with Patriot Blue.

I have often caught my children yanking on the door of somebody else's vehicle while they admonished me that I had forgotten to unlock the van. I have often walked up to the wrong vehicle only to realize that my remote entry gadget wouldn't work. But twice, both in grocery store parking lots, I have mistaken somebody else's identical vehicle for my own, opened the door, plopped my butt in the seat and tried to stuff my key into their ignition, only to find some little detail, like rubber floor mats or a car seat, that doesn't belong in my van. In both instances, I slinked out of the van, my eyes darting around to make sure nobody was observing me, and nonchalantly meandered to the correct wheels, entered like nothing out of the ordinary was going on, and drove away. In both instances, I had the fleeting thought that perhaps my remote entry clicker did in fact, unlock their car. But upon trying to relock it with my clicker, it didn't work either time.

I don't know why I'm the one whose embarrassed. What kind of moron leaves their car doors unlocked?! Next time I make this little blunder, if their car is cleaner than mine, I'm takin' it.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I have yet to enter the wrong vehicle but have frantically tugged on the door of the wrong one wondering why in the world it wouldn't open and why my clicker wasn't unlocking it!!

Me thinks others that read your blog, if they are willing to admit it, will have similar stories.

On the upside, it gave you another funny blog for the day! :-)
Anonymous said…
That's funny. I would like to see the look on the person's face and hear you try to explain to the person who owns that vehicle if they arrived while you were in it.
Hee hee!
-Charlene
Anonymous said…
That's too funny! I have the white 2002 Ford Explorer and a similar thing happened to me 1 time. The funny thing is that I had my little clicker thingy all ready and was using it to unlock the door. I was within earshot of it and heard the door unlock. I grabbed the door and opened it no problem, but it did not have the tan leather seats that I have. I was in shock when all of a sudden I heard two ladies laughing. It was their car that I was trying to get in and she was the one who was using her little clicker thingy. My car was right next to them. We all ended up having a big laugh over that one.

- Debbie Stewart
Anonymous said…
I am way late on reading this but I'm catching up on your blogs. I believe there are as many grey Honda Odysseys as there are blue Caravans. I am ALWAYS walking up to the wrong Odyssey and the other day I was getting so annoyed because my clicker wasn't unlocking my door. When I stopped long enough to inspect I realized that my van was, in fact, the next row over. abb

Popular posts from this blog

Stickin' It Out

I got married today. Well, not exactly today. It was Friday, June 2. But the year was 1989 - 17 years ago. "Amazing", people say. "Good for you", they comment. "You must have picked the right one", the add. Amazing? Yes. Good for me? I'll admit it. But it has nothing to do with picking the right one, really. It's not because I found the perfect boy, and it's certainly not because he found the perfect girl. It might sound a little unromantic, but there never really is a 'right one' floating around out there waiting in the cosmos for the other 'right one' to crash and connect. There may be 'better ones'; there may be 'more easily compatible' or something or other. But the real story is you start becoming the right one the moment you vow that "you do". When I married, I had been 20 for a whole 33 days, we had just completed a 2-year long-distance realtionship and HE was five years older tha...

Gourmet Tastebuds Looking for Chef

Brainy Boy is every good cook's dream. He will eat anything as long as it smells like food and he can't identify it. Routinely when I set dinner before him, he comments something like 'Mom, I just really prefer gourmet restaurant-type food." And he's not kidding. No PJB for him, no Chef Boyardee, no Easy Mac. He's all about shrimp scampi, homemade gnocchi (not frozen) and is dying to know what caviar tastes like. The problem is that I'm a functional meat & potatoes kind of cook. I'd love to be a throw-ingredients-together-to-make-an-awesome-dish girl, but I'm just not. I don't really know how to cook without burying my head in a cookbook, and I don't enjoy the whole process of putting it together either--kind of the same way I am with gardening. I came up with the clever idea of letting Brainy Boy choose a meal a week that I would try, his choice. I pulled out my handy Kraft magazine that comes in the mail four times a year, a...

Daddy's Girl

I witnessed an amazing thing last night. Little Chic was invited to sing at our annual church family camp which is about a 45-minute drive from our church. That's a big undertaking for an 8-1/2 year old girl, but being the aspiring American Idol that she is, it is also right down her alley. She has looked forward to it for weeks now, and she drove us all nuts rehearsing her rendition of Amazing Grace with the performance track about a gazillion times since Sunday. As yesterday approached, her nerves set in a bit, but excitement was still the dominant emotion that exuded from her. For some reason, Little Chic had her heart set on Hero Guy making the show even though we'd all seen it performed at church and a school Talent Show already. Because of logistics of getting us all to the destination on time, I took Brainy Boy and Little Chic myself and Hero Guy drove directly from work. To complicate matters, Hero Guy needed to leave directly after the 3- minute performance t...