Ah, yes, yet another tale of woe that involves a car! This time it was my first car: a ‘91 white Honda Civic. What a sweet ride it was. Power locks and everything! It looked very much like this:

So, when I was a junior in high school, I had just started dating a girl that I worked with. We had gone on a few dates, but I can’t remember if we were official yet at the time of this tale. Anyway, our dates were usually less than exciting because, well, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania isn’t exactly known for unparalleled excitement, especially for underage teenagers. So, one night, my date and I were merely driving up and down the Carlisle Pike, trying to figure out how to spend the rest of our evening.

Suddenly, I got a brilliant idea. Why not drive by Kmart and introduce my date to a friend of mine that worked there? Great! I pulled the car into the parking lot; but it looked like Kmart was about to close. I hurriedly got out of the car and my date followed suit. I don’t know why I was in such a rush—maybe I was nervous—but I somehow managed to lock the keys in the car. With the lights on. And the engine running.

“Um…” I said and scratched my head.

“What?” my date asked.

“I just locked the keys in the car.”

“But the engine is still running.”

“Yeah…”

Now what? Well, I told my date, there’s a gas station down the road; they probably have a payphone (ah, pre- cell phone days!). So, we walked together to the gas station where, fortunately, they did have a payphone. I called my dad and told him what had happened.

“How the hell did you do that?” he asked.

I wasn’t quite sure, I told him, but he agreed to drive out to Kmart with a spare key. I don’t remember what my date and I talked about on the way to the gas station, or on the walk back, or while we waited the fifteen to twenty minutes before my dad showed up, but I do have a vague recollection of my dad calling me an idiot at some point or another.

Stupid cars.