We don't get along...

Last weekend, my sister and I dropped by at my girl friend's new apartment. She lives on the top floor of her building and while we were there, enjoying the view and her descriptions of how awesome it is to live there, an emergency vehicle drives by producing lots of noisy reverberating echoes. "That's the only drawback..." she said.

Since Brad & I only have 1 vehicle at this point in our life, on occasion we will borrow his parents' green chrysler van. The last time I drove this green vehicle, we had a brush with (read: on) the wall resulting in my hesitancy to drive this much-longer-than-our-2-door-civic-hatchback van. This was about a year ago.

Today I visited my girl friend again. I figure I can drive this vehicle again with extra care & caution. I parked the infamous green van outside her place and we proceeded to walk to lunch. We lunched, we lingered, we window shopped for about 2 hours, blithely enjoying each others' company and conversation. As we approached her block, I hear a constant, insufferable car horn. "OH NO!" I gasp. Please don't let that be the van....

When the steering wheel club is put on the van, it can fall at an awkward position onto the car horn, rendering a consistent, blaring, annoying sound. Sure enough, it is my green van.

"NO!!! OH MAN, this is sooooooooo embarrassing!!! I'm sooooooooooo sorry to all the neighbours!!!!!" I'm exclaiming as I run up to the van, open the door, and yank off the club as quickly as possible. At this point, I'm warily conscious of the closest spectators, a teenage couple making out on a nearby bench. They gave me a disinterest glance and went right back to their canoodling. Well it didn't seem to bother them too much as they continued to smooch unabashedly, but I'm still mortified. I know that I'd be royally annoyed if this incident happened in my neighbourhood during the hottest week in 4 decades and everyone HAS to have their windows open. I went to hide out in my friend's place for a little bit before approaching the vehicle again.

As we're on the elevator going up, I get a phone call from a number I don't recognize. Hmm, I guess I'll answer it. I think to myself.

"Hi Sharon! It's (brad's) dad! I just got a call from the police..." he begins.

"OH dad! I'm sooooooo embarrassed, I know what the problem is! Everything is ok!! DOn't worry. I fixed it!! There's nothing wrong with the van" I explained. I told him the situation with the club and gravity. I'm thinking that he's never going to let us use the van again with mine & this van's history...

"Oh good!" he sounds amused, but relieved, I'm sure...

He shared the conversation he had with the cops.

The phone call with the police went something like...

Fuzz: Sir, do you own a green chrysler van?

Dad: Yeah, that's my van.

Fuzz: And it's parked at a particular location in Vancouver at the moment?

Dad: Well, that's possible because my daughter-in-law borrowed it.

Fuzz: Sir, your car alarm has been going off for the past hour. You're going to have to do something about it or the van will be towed.

Dad: Oh, I don't have a car alarm!

Fuzz: Hm... I guess we got the wrong license plate then! Sorry for the bother!

I was SO mortified. I'm convinced that the van has it out for me.

I'm also convinced that blogging about this will make it less embarrassing for me, as I told my in-laws this evening whilst we had a backyard party for visiting friends. It certainly does make a good tag-team story for my FIL and me, though. We were thoroughly entertaining, it seemed! Always a silver lining, my friends...

That's all to it: my embarrassment, your amusement.