I thought I was extraordinarily lucky last week. One morning I couldn't find my car keys; I searched everywhere before giving up and borrowing my wife's set and driving in to work in the pre-dawn darkness. I figured that if the keys didn't turn up someplace at home I would have to go through the expense and hassle of getting a new set. A bad start for the day.

But early that afternoon I received an in-house email: come to the front office and you can pick up your keys! A passerby had found them lying on the trunk of my car, and that car — a 1972 Dodge Dart, quite likely the oldest and ugliest vehicle in the lot — led directly to me.

But how in the world could the keys have been there after a 15-mile freeway drive? As I worked out the chain of events, I must have dropped them on the trunk lid when I got home late the previous evening while fumbling with hat, gloves, etc. Overnight it rained and the temperature was fortuitously just below the freezing point. So the key ring was glued to the car by a layer of ice, which thawed shortly after sunrise.

Such good fortune can scarcely go unpunished: a few days later a policeman pulled me over. I was again driving the '72 Dart, and the officer of the law asked me, quite politely, whether I was aware that the registration had expired at the end of October 2002? "No, Sir." And was I aware that it was now February 2003? "Yes, Sir."

Politeness helps: I escaped with a (hefty) ticket, and the Dart escaped being impounded. Reminder to self: check expiration dates more often.

(see also MujeresFrias (23 Jan 2000), ...)

TopicPersonalHistory - 2003-02-06

(correlates: DogWork, PhiloSpam, Comments on 2008-10-08 - Butter and Eggs, ...)