Momentary Panic

[lph]

Hee-hee

I'm forever "losing" our car in parking lots, because it's the most bland, non-descript car you can imagine, an old, dusty dark blue Toyota Carina. But it has true class - looks like yesterdays bread, but works like clockwork.

Catrin, your story reminded me of a cat I grew up with, I've probably told it before. Bailey was a large, orange male cat, jumpy and full of neuroses but a kindly soul. One day he disappeared, but a large, grey male cat came wandering in, very much at home. We figured this grey stranger must have chased poor Bailey away, so we promptly shooed and yelled the brazen interloper out. He kept coming back, though, so we shooed and yelled some more. It wasn't until I actually touched the cat... and got ashes on my hand... that I remembered that we'd had a bonfire outside and there was a large pile of ash left over... Poor Bailey didn't get any less neurotic after this.

[jessmarimba]

I fly a lot and try to always park in the same place in the parking lot. Well, I took the bike rack off once to wash it, parked the car in some random spot at the airport, and...lost the car. I drive a gray civic so it is not distinctive at all. Fortunately at our airport you can call the airport cops if you've lost your vehicle and they can (very creepy here) tell you where it is based on the license plate and the airline you flew in on. I was pretty relieved after an hour and a half of wandering around that I could just call up and find it, but that kind of surveillance is disturbing!

[Possegal]

I took the trolley home from work one day, got off the trolley and looked at the street in front of my apartment, didn't see my car and thought - who the heck stole my beat up old car?

Then I remembered, I drove to work that day. So my car spent the night in the parking lot at my lab.

In college once I borrowed a friends car to go to the mall quickly. Her dad was a mechanic, she always had some car or other, while 99% of us had no car. It wasn't until I was done and coming out of hte mall that I realized I never paid attention to what the heck kind of car it was. I knew the inside looked a lot like the car my father used to have. So I knew it was a dodge or plymouth. And the interior was blue. That was all I had to go on. Pre-cell phone and pre-alarm key ring, of course. I figured if I waited long enough, the mall would close and everyone would go home and there would be one car left in the lot.

[Owlie]

"My" car is a Honda Accord, in that sort of metallic sand color. Yep, about as nondescript as you can get. I try to park away from buildings both for the ease of parking and the fact that my car is likely to be the only one there!
My parents have a slightly newer version of the same car, in a slightly different color. Going out with them is fun: I can't find the car! Do you remember where we parked? That's not our car! Oh. I was looking for the other one.

My mom is a champion of forgetting where she parked. She once went up to an identical car with people in it and tried to unlock the door. I look at the stickers. (We've got a collection of window clings on both cars...)