Dude, That’s My Car

One of my relatives told me when he got a new car, he had an awful time finding it in parking lots. He wandered up and down rows and rows of cars, too embarrassed to hit the horn on his key fob and alert everybody to his situation. All I could offer was a “been there, done that”. I once tried, when I had to go inside a gas station to pre-pay, to then come out and try to put gas into the wrong car. The owner wasn’t happy when he saw me fiddling with the gas cap and asked, “What the heck do you think you’re doing?!” When I answered, “Putting gas into my car.” He frowned, his only comment being, “That is SO not your car.” Not even a smile. My thought was he should have waited longer before saying something. He might have gotten a free fill-up. That car was a small SUV I loved and it lasted for twenty years. I had the same issue with our next car. I actually opened the back of that one and was putting in my groceries, to the surprise of the woman in the driver’s seat of the vehicle. She was at least gracious but, just like the man at the gas pump, missed an opportunity. I thought I had at least gotten better these days at recognizing our Prius, after having owned it for sixteen years, but the other day I came out of a store and tried repeatedly to open the hatchback of a car I thought was mine. Same color and everything but Toyota, it turns out, made a lot of identical cars that year. I did momentarily wonder about the small decorative decal I’d never noticed on the back of it but figured it was something the car wash had put on the last time my husband went through. Only when I finally looked at the license plate, did I see the problem. My car was two parking spaces away. One of our sons does this too. “If it’s kind of large and gray, it’s mine,” he says. I was thinking this could be an inherited thing, until he told me he recently left his car unlocked and ran into a convenience store near his house. He came out and went to get in what actually was his car. In the driver’s seat sat a man, happily eating a sandwich. The man apologized and left in a hurry to get into his own car nearby. Apparently It’s not genetic.

Photo courtesy moinzon at Pixasbay.com