Me and my car, always on the move

“It’s has to be here.” I remember uttering those words as we walked back and forth.

Searching.

Aimlessly.

After all, the alternative made no sense.

It was the early 1990s and my husband ( then my boyfriend at the time) were on the MV Bluenose having just sailed to Bar Harbor. We were on the car deck looking for our vehicle but we couldn’t find it. We walked around for five minutes as every- one else was inside their car waiting to drive off the ferry.

That’s when I told him, somewhat confused, “It has to be here.”

Of course it was and we eventually found it, but not until half of the vehicles had driven off the ferry.

Fast forward nearly 20 years later and this time it was my two boys and I walking the parking garage of a Halifax shopping centre. Try as we might we could not find my car. This time we had to benefit of the remote key and lock/unlock button that we could hit, which would beep the horn. But whenever we walked in the direction of where we thought the sound was coming from my vehicle wasn’t there.

My oldest son was convinced someone was joy riding it around the levels of the parking garage just to mess with us.

At times I felt like we were in a Seinfeld episode, only without a gold fish in a plastic bag, as we walked the parking garage.

Exasperated by the fact 15 minutes had gone by and we still couldn’t find my car, I looked at my kids and uttered those faithful words once again, “It has to be here.”

I think we all jumped for joy when we finally found it parked just where we had left it.

There have been many times over the past several months that I’ve find myself questioning where my vehicle is. I leave work and I walk over to it in the parking lot. I try to punch in the key code on the door, or hit the unlock button, but nothing happens. It won’t let me in.

I usually stand there confused for a minute or so until it finally clicks on – this isn’t my car.

There’s another silver Ford Edge that parks in the parking lot at work and I can’t count the number of times I’ve thought it was my car at the end of the day – even though it’s not where I parked my car when I arrived at work that morning.

A few weeks ago the woman who drives my car’s doppelganger was pulling into the parking spot next to me. As she was getting out of her car I told her, “You have no idea how many times I’ve tried to get into your car.”

Actually, she did, because she told me she mistakes my car for her car multiple times each week.

And so I had to laugh when my oldest son stopped by my work one day last week to pick something up from me. He walked into the newsroom telling me he was certain he had just seen me pull away.

“I saw your car leaving the parking lot and I was waving my arms and yelling for you to stop,” he said. He may have said he even chased the car, although my recollection is now fuzzy, but he even commented on how the car he saw had the same rims as mine.

Of course it begged the question: Why would I have told him to stop by if I was just going to drive away?

“Yeah,” I told him. “There’s another car that looks like mine that parks in the parking lot.”

I guess he should have called to see if I was still in the newsroom, otherwise he would have known this about my car – it has to be here.