This, my friends, is a story about a molehill that turned in to a mountain. It all started innocently enough: a family friend met up with someone for lunch. Hours later, however, she went out to her driveway and realized that her car was not in the driveway. She was more than a little alarmed about this sudden turn of events, and she realized, in hindsight, that the dog had been barking an unusual amount in the moments before. Aw, crap.
She hunted around in the nearby area, but the car was nowhere to be seen. In a sign of our times, she took to social media to try to get help. She alerted all of her friends that the car was missing, and she provided the make and model of the car. If any of them saw the car, she asked them to alert her and the police, so that the car could be retrieved. It's one of the quickest ways to cast an informal APB, so I immediately understood why she did this. Of course, there were a few laments about the sad turn of events.
Now, this next part is where things start to get amusing. She just so happened to email a family member that lived in a different part of the country. She reported that the car had been stolen, but she also added in some advice about locking car doors and being extra careful with where one parks the car. After all, there was a noticeable increase in car thefts in the recent past. Better safe than sorry. Yes, she more or less told someone, "be careful, they're stealing cars!"
Mind you, this is always valid advice, but telling someone thousands of miles away this is a little bit like warning them to watch out for potholes when driving. The conditions are so vastly different that there's next to no value in that kind of a warning. I'll cut her some slack because she was in an altered state of mind, but I couldn't help but chuckle about all of this.
Of course, the kicker was yet to come. A day later, she realized that since she had met up with someone for lunch, she'd caught a ride back with the other person. Her "stolen" car was actually sitting in the parking lot, exactly where she had left it. Um, oops. I don't actually remember if there was a follow-up social media post, but the whole thing had been an exercise in futility. Like I said, the words "mountain" and "mole hill" came to mind.
Needless to say, this whole episode resulted in a fair bit of chuckling. Also, the phrase, "they're stealing cars!" will occasionally come to mind, and I can't help but break out in to a broad grin at that point. On the bright side, the whole experience is most definitely making the world a happier place. I'm going to call that a win in my book.
She hunted around in the nearby area, but the car was nowhere to be seen. In a sign of our times, she took to social media to try to get help. She alerted all of her friends that the car was missing, and she provided the make and model of the car. If any of them saw the car, she asked them to alert her and the police, so that the car could be retrieved. It's one of the quickest ways to cast an informal APB, so I immediately understood why she did this. Of course, there were a few laments about the sad turn of events.
Now, this next part is where things start to get amusing. She just so happened to email a family member that lived in a different part of the country. She reported that the car had been stolen, but she also added in some advice about locking car doors and being extra careful with where one parks the car. After all, there was a noticeable increase in car thefts in the recent past. Better safe than sorry. Yes, she more or less told someone, "be careful, they're stealing cars!"
Mind you, this is always valid advice, but telling someone thousands of miles away this is a little bit like warning them to watch out for potholes when driving. The conditions are so vastly different that there's next to no value in that kind of a warning. I'll cut her some slack because she was in an altered state of mind, but I couldn't help but chuckle about all of this.
Of course, the kicker was yet to come. A day later, she realized that since she had met up with someone for lunch, she'd caught a ride back with the other person. Her "stolen" car was actually sitting in the parking lot, exactly where she had left it. Um, oops. I don't actually remember if there was a follow-up social media post, but the whole thing had been an exercise in futility. Like I said, the words "mountain" and "mole hill" came to mind.
Needless to say, this whole episode resulted in a fair bit of chuckling. Also, the phrase, "they're stealing cars!" will occasionally come to mind, and I can't help but break out in to a broad grin at that point. On the bright side, the whole experience is most definitely making the world a happier place. I'm going to call that a win in my book.
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