I’m not good with cars. Or remembering things. I suck, if you want the truth. My family likes to say that it’s a good thing my head is permanently attached or I’d have left it in a restaurant or subway platform long since. Okay, this is starting to make me think of serial killers. Moving on…

There was the time when my man and I spent two hours wandering the parking lots of Seattle-Tacoma airport in a vain search for our vehicle. And many, many other hours have been spent since circling my own two-block radius pressing on the unlock button in hope of it showing me where we parked the car.

I am certainly not organized enough to write, for instance, locations and times on a post-it note to affix to the fridge.

A friend — who shall remain nameless and untraceable or else — is that person who puts up post-it notes and is organized and shit. And yet, when I ran into her yesterday, she was on the way to the impound lot to pick up her car, which she had reported stolen two weeks before when it wasn’t where the post-it note said it would be.

It had been one of those nights when you circle and circle before finally finding a spot. A Tuesday side spot on a Tuesday night, which had her gloating. She says she wrote a note on her phone before leaving the car (really? wow) and also the fridge post-it telling her when to move it. She swears she wasn’t on anything.

So, the next morning, having left something in the car, she went around the car to where she’d parked. Only the car, which was less than two weeks old and her first, was gone. She walked up and down the block and the next and the next. She says 40 times.

Later that day, she calls her local precinct who, because they ARE supposed to be fighting real crime, initially brush her off thinking she’s forgotten where she parked it. Hours pass but by dint of great persuasive abilities, my friend manages to find a helpful cop to take her report.

I recited my story down to the last identical detail – exact time I parked, address of the spot I pulled into firstand then decided it wasn’t close enough to my house, the mileage, and every personal item that I left in the car. They drove me back to “the scene” basically to look for broken glass (none) and to question the women that sit on folding chairs right across from where I parked 24/7. They of course, saw nothing.

The alarm is sounded, the search is on, insurance company alerted to the theft, etc.

Two weeks later, the car is finally located. On the block it was actually on. No signs of forced entry, broken glass, thievery. And so they towed it. Because my friend deserved it after the trouble she’d put them through. And it was Tuesday, the car being parked on a Tuesday side. She doesn’t know how it escaped notice the Tuesday before.

The reunion:

The dude who came out to help me said “whatsa matta honey – ya forget where ya parked yer car?” This was while he was pinching my cheek, which I let him do because at that moment I knew my car was fine and that I probably deserved condescension and humiliation at the very least.

Good thing you can’t be arrested for being stupid. And I should be in sales, because I convinced my normally skeptical self, an entire precinct, a major insurance company and a host of friends that my car had been jacked.

Drive safely, dear.