It's one of those nights. There are outfits on the floor from previous evenings out which should be moved to their proper homes in my closet, there are environment notes I could be writing down, yet I've decided to revisit a day which took place in the seventeenth year of my life, a day I like to call The Worst Day Ever.

It was a Tuesday, I think. I had had my car for a little over a month and even though it was pushing thirteen years old I loved the newfound freedom it brought me. I had been counting down the days until I got my license. Others were not so passionate. Some kids didn't see the "need for a license" and I never understood the logic behind that. I couldn't wait to finally buy a pair of jeans I liked at the mall without having to ask my mother to take me. The car had been my grandfather's and had sat in his garage the last year he was alive, and extensive work needed to be done on it. The car was parked on Tom's lot, a man we had always taken our cars to and in him we had instilled our trust. This particular mechanic had a policy of keeping the cars parked outside with the keys in the ignition. No one thinks their car will get stolen, especially not one aged over a decade with manual windows, no working air conditioner, or even a tape player. Well, someone stole it. Got right in it, turned it on, and drove off with it. The keys were right there in the ignition, it's not as though the thieves had to do any work. I was in school at the time and my mother left a voicemail on my cell phone telling me to call her. I went to the bathroom and called home. I don't remember quite how she told me, whether she beat around the bush or not. All I heard was "your" and "car" and "stolen." I remember staring at the pale blue cement blocks of the bathroom wall and wanting to embark on a murderous rampage. I was so full of rage and hurt and disbelief that I pinched myself to ensure this was not just one of those I-swore-it-was-real dreams. It was real. How could this happen? We live in a suburb, not Compton. How could someone just take another person's CAR? I was so incredibly angry. I couldn't even cry. For some reason crying did not seem appropriate. This was the second time in my life when I really actually thought about killing someone, the first time being in eighth grade when a particular boy made fun of me relentlessly, and I deemed this situation way worse than some pimply pre-teen making my life miserable. I wanted to walk right over to Tom's and cut him to little pieces, to scream and yell and curse until God himself struck me down. Instead I went to class. I walked in and when the teacher looked at me, expecting some lame excuse for why I was late, I simply blurted out, "Someone just stole my car." It was an odd situation, really. I couldn't believe it was happening and I had to repeat over and over, "My car was stolen. I am not dreaming." Once home I called my then boyfriend and told him about the whole ordeal. His response? "That sucks." Yeah, I know, right? I dumped him a few hours later. I was absolutely distraught. Wow. People were cold, heartless slobs, capable of creating such wonderful misery for another person while not even giving a second thought as to how their selfish actions might affect someone else. It was just a car, just a material object which could be replaced, but that crappy little pile of tin meant something to me and someone had helped themselves to it with no regard for me or my poor dead grandfather. I lost a little faith in God, a lot in the inherit good of man.

About four days later I was in the the front lawn, letting the dog take a whiz, when my mother opened the door and blurted that my car had been recovered. It had been left running in the parking lot of a convenience store a few miles away. Nothing had been taken, the car was just as those bastards had found it. In fact, I passed that same store every time I went to work. We never found out who did it and we never went back to Tom again. I have used this story several times in college in response to questions of "Tell me something unique about yourself" asked on the first day of class by eager professors. We sold that car over a year ago and I now have a brand new one, but each time I walk into the parking garage a part of me always fears it will be missing. I guess it could have been a lot worse, and there probably is a moral buried in here somewhere although I'm not sure what it is. Don't trust humanity? Always check if your mechanic leaves the keys in the ignition when he repairs cars? I don't hate people like I did, but I still hope those who took my car die a slow, painful, fiery death. Time for homework.