A Life Wasted

What Am I Driving?

The car could be a problem too. More times than I can recall I walked out of a hotel in the morning and looked across the sea of cars having no idea which one I was driving that day. Or came out of a restaurant or mall with the same problem. I changed cars so often that I could not remember what I was driving. That would have been embarrassing had it not been for the wonderful key fob and alarm.

I mostly stole new cars and fast ones. They were generally new because they were from dealerships and they were either SUV's for the advantage of four-wheel drive or they were fast for the ability to out run those trying to arrest me. On one occasion I had a Chrysler Sebring. I'd never heard of this car until I saw it on the lot but I liked what I saw and it looked fast. Being a guy who doesn't really know a lot about cars, the Sebring looked like every other mid-size car to me so I figured it would blend it. Turned out it was pretty fast and handled wonderfully. The car was a thrill to drive. But it did not blend in as well as I had hoped. It didn't blend in at all. What I didn't know was that my 2001 hard top Sebring was rare. Most Sebring's that year came in convertible only. To further complicate this matter the roof of the hardtop Sebring didn't look anything like the convertible roof. For this reason, most people who knew cars were not able to identify this car, which made them curious about my stolen car. Not the reaction I was after.
After several days of driving this car I had noticed I got lots of looks. I didn't understand this because the car looked like all the other cars that size to me. But there was no doubt the car was getting looks. 

I figured this out early one evening when I pulled into a motel to check in and the clerk came out gushing over my car. He started asking questions about the car that I wouldn't have known had I owned the car. Finally, I said that it was my boss's car and I didn't know anything about it. So he told me more than I ever want to know about any car. This young guy loved this car. It was his dream car. The hard top, not the convertible. Rather than check in I asked directions to a grocery store. He was disappointed that I wasn't staying but gave me the directions.

Another long night.

With that same car, I returned to it after shopping in a grocery store to find a pretty teenage girl looking in the window of my car. Because I had so little to entertain me I hit the alarm button on the key fob. That was funny. What wasn't so funny was when she pointed at her car in the next row. She had a Chrysler Sebring identical to mine. Same hard top and same color. She was so excited she wanted to be BFF's. To exchange phone numbers and everything. She looked dejected when I said no, so I explained that she was such a pretty young girl my wife would never understand. She accepted this and we parted on good terms. I dumped the car that night.

My personal favorite was in Casper, Wyoming. This happened in the winter, so it's out of chronological order, but fits this theme. It had started snowing and radio reports said it was going to be a bad blow. I didn't figure I wanted to be out in what a Wyoming disk jockey considered a bad storm so I stopped mid-day at a local motel called "Little America." I wouldn't call this a great motel, but it was a nice place that I liked. Due to the storm I ended up staying there for three days, which is a long time for me to sit still. After I left I drove on to Oregon and spent a week between there and Washington. On the way back I stopped in Casper again and like an idiot stopped at Little America again. All I was thinking was that I had liked the motel. The staff was all friendly but they were also pretty sharp. As is my habit I handed the clerk my fake driver's licenses for check in. He tapped on his computer for a minute then gave me a funny look and said, "That's strange." "What's strange," I asked. "Well, our computer keeps all the information on our guest and I don't see you in the database." "I've never stayed here before," I said. "Yes you did," he said. He was being helpful not accusing me of lying. "During that snow storm, remember." "Oh yeah, I remember now," I said lamely. The reason his computer couldn't find my name is because I had used a different name on the way through a week ago. The clerk entered my new name and address commenting the whole time that this didn't make any sense and saying he was going to call their computer guy to complain.

I paid for the room, asked for directions to a restaurant I had seen at the previous exit, then left. Because Interstate 80 is so long and unbroken up there I took Interstate 25 south to Denver. Another long miserable night of driving after I was tired and ready to hit the sack.