Cars

We have a little black car. Were it not for a few bumper stickers I'd really like removed, a crystal pyramid on the dash, and a dream catcher hanging from the rear view mirror, as well as, er, some big scratches on the front bumper from an accident not bad enough to get repaired, I'd lose track of it in a parking lot and walk up to another black car. Actually, I do that sometimes anyway.

When I lived in Evanston, my boyfriend drove a teal Ford I don't know what. You see this car on the street all the time. Everyone owns one. One evening, he lent me the car to go visit Katie. Though he told me where it was, I couldn't find it immediately, then located it a few cars from where he had described. It looked darker than normal, like he hadn't washed it in a while and the dirty winter snow had caked onto it. I unlocked it, got in, and adjusted the seat, like I usually did. The car felt different. The radio presets were not the ones I was used to. I couldn't find some paperwork that Kevin had been screaming at me was definitely, most certainly without a doubt in his glovebox. Halfway to Katie's I began to suspect this actually wasn't Kevin's car. By the time I got there, I was in a panic for stealing someone else's car, and what had happened to Kevin's if I wasn't able to locate the right car on the street?

I raced back home, and we looked through the registration paperwork to see who the car belonged to. The owner lived just down the block. We knocked on his door and explained the situation, much to his befuddlement. We showed him how our keys opened his car, then he tried his and opened Kevin's car.

Kevin was all fired up to sue somebody, but it turned out that car manufacturers really only make about ten to fifteen different locks, and believe it's a supremely long shot that people who live near each other will end up with the same car in colors that look similar in the dark.