Another Trial and Tribulation

It is no secret to my family that I have absolutely no discernment when it comes to cars. Is it little and blue with a bit of a snub to the rear end?  “Hey, Look, Flori! Deborah’s car!!!” (Amused snicker.  “No, Grammy, that is NOT Beeba’s car!  It’s not even the same make!”)  Is it a white SUV?  “I think that must be Jesse and Christina’s car!” (followed by a furious wave that dies to a conventional Delaware “Howdy” upon seeing that the handsome black driver is neither of them).  Is that a red minivan?  It must be my sister, Sarah!  (I wonder what she is doing in Milford tod–? Oh, sorry.  Not her, after all)!

Now there have been several parking lot mix-ups when I’ve tried to get into the wrong silver minivan, and when I’ve traversed the parking lot looking for said vehicle, but usually I come out of it feeling foolish, but at least without witnesses.

Well.  This week I had some extra chicken soup and some canvas bags that I wanted to take in to Brandywine Counseling & Community Services Center, and decided that it would be as good a time as any to run it in on my way to Walmart yesterday morning.  I loaded up the silver chariot and checked my list and was off.  I pulled up to the center, parked, and surveyed the surroundings.  A woman came out of the front door, and stopped beside the large trash bins and rummaged through until she found something that she had obviously stashed there before going inside.  She came down the steps and sidled over to the van parked a parking space away and the guy in the front passenger’s seat rolled down the window an inch or two, and took the prize find—a perfectly good cigarette.  The two of them talked through the window a minute, then she went over and got into the driver’s seat.

Huh!  Well, I decided it was none of my nevermind, and I gathered my items, took them into the center, and conversed minimally with the ones in charge and then bid farewell, my spirit feeling that sort of lightness that I often feel when I find a place for some of the extra things in my fridge. I came carefully down the steps, and watched my feet as I came down the sidewalk so that I didn’t catch my toes on a crack and faceplant on this terribly windy morning.

We replaced the fob on our minivan a few months ago, and sometimes it doesn’t respond immediately to the urgent pushing on the unlock button, and it was really cold.  I started pushing the unlock button as I came up to the minivan, watching the button to see if it would pop up.  It wasn’t budging.  I proceeded to hold it up close to the door handle and pushed it again and again.

Suddenly I heard a tapping.  Insistent, almost frantic.  Coming from the window in front of me.  I raised my eyes from the lock button to see a surprised face looking at me from inside the van.  What in the world?  Believe me, a very surprised face looked back at the car occupants.  I very hurriedly said, “Oh, I’m so sorry!!!  Wrong car!!!” And was rewarded by a quizzical, silly smile.  Then I did some more hurrying — away from the side of the van, back around the corner to where my own van was sitting complacently exactly where I left it ten minutes earlier.

I took my red faced self into my van and looked across the one empty parking place to where the offending vehicle smugly sat, and wondered how I could make such an embarrassing mistake.

I want to make something clear. 

This was not a result of my lack of discernment when it comes to vehicles.  I hadn’t noticed when I parked there, but the vehicle next to mine was a Silver Town and Country Minivan, just like my own.  I’m not going to pretend it was in the same state of repair, but it was the same make and model and pretty much anyone could have made the same mistake. 

So there!