Car Keys

The employee shuttle was pulling up, so I quickly grabbed my umbrella and bag and ran to catch it. I got the feeling that in my haste, I may have left my keys in the car. I searched my bag.  They weren’t in there. When I got into work, I toyed with the idea of taking the shuttle back out to find them but decided against it. It’s not a new car. It’s in an employee parking lot. What can happen, right? But then I thought, “What if I dropped them while running for the bus, and someone found them and turned them in somewhere. Or what if they got kicked under someone else’s car.”  I called my husband, who works at the same place, and he brought his key to me, so at least I’d have a way of starting the car to get home. We would deal with the lost keys later.

The day ended, and I rode the bus out to the parking lot. While walking to my car I searched the ground looking for my keys. Nothing. As I got closer, I started hearing a low rumbling humming sound. I thought, “Is that… did I… No, it couldn’t be.” Yep, my car was running. I not only left the keys in the ignition, I actually never turned the car off. At first I panicked. I quickly turned it off to let it cool down. I waited, calmed myself and turned the ignition. Except for missing about a half tank of gas, everything seemed OK. My original thought was to keep this to myself. I’d be too embarrassed to tell anyone about it, especially my husband. But the more I thought about it, the funnier it seemed. What kind of idiot leaves their car running for eight and a half hours. I started laughing at myself and then couldn’t wait to tell everyone. I posted it on FaceBook, called my friends. Everyone had a good laugh. Well, everyone except my husband. When I told him, he looked at me like I just told him I decided to cut off my left leg just for fun. He was quiet for a very long time. Eventually, he got over it. But I don’t think he ever laughed about it.