Regardless of religion, color or creed, there’s one ritualistic experience we nearly all share living in Southern California: Trying to find your car.
Many of us paid an absolute wad of money for our cars, and would therefore like to know where they are. Especially when we emerge, footsore and tired, from a shopping mall, movie theater, theme park or the beach.
Unfortunately, these are destinations frequented by many other people, most all of whom also parked their vehicles there. Gazing out over the endless rows of shiny metal can send your heart deep into your nether regions, when you realize you have absolutely no idea where yours is located, and don’t even have the energy to find out. Maybe you can just lie down in the road and someone will help you.
Hmm, let’s see. You came into the mall through Nordstrom’s shoe department. You think. But maybe it wasn’t Nordstrom. Maybe it was Target. Was it Target? No, there weren’t any red bullseyes.
You think back, trying to remember if there were any landmarks nearby. Normally, you’re good about remembering the number and letter of your location or taking a photo, but this time you were distracted by a call from your spouse, demanding to know why the salt shaker has disappeared.
By the time you got into the store, you were still arguing on the phone, explaining you put it in the dishwasher because it was dirty, so you failed to take proper precautions. This isn’t a problem until you emerge hours later, laden with shopping bags and throbbing feet.
Then, you realize you have absolutely no idea where you left your magical carriage. Unfortunately, yours looks exactly like the 23,040 other white sedans in the lot. You end up walking up and down the long rows, dispiritedly pushing the unlock button on your key remote, hoping you’ll hear a friendly corresponding little beep.
Then, joy oh joy. You hear the little beep. You head to a white Toyota that looks like yours. Just as you set down your shopping bags, the awful realization hits you. The front seat of this car is clean as the day it left the showroom. The back seat is equally spotless. There’s a cute Hello Kitty trash bag affixed to the seat.
There are no candy wrappers on the floor. No loose coins or dirty, sandy towels from when you went to the beach last month. No Cheerios that your kid dropped in 2023. This is not your car. It may not be anyone’s car. Satan may have put it there just to tempt you to say bad words out loud.
You’re tempted to just leave your shopping bags behind because they’re getting heavy and you realize the clothes you bought have now probably already gone out of style.
(This is the part where New Yorkers sneer at us, because we’re so dependent on our car culture. Gee, they just walk everywhere, take a cab or a subway. Well, all that’s fine until it’s frigidly cold and snowing and you’re standing at a bus stop laden with bags and the bus never shows up. As you slip into hypothermia, you dream about jumping into your nice, warm car and going home. The police find you there, frozen to death, the next morning.)
I remember the first time I took my kids to Disneyland, when they were aged 4 and 6. I forgot to write down where we were parked, so after a full day there, when my dogs were already barking, (that’s a metaphor, people. No dog were harmed in the creation of this column) we tromped around the lot endlessly searching. Finally, 4-year-old Curly Girl walked over and hit the big blue panic button on a security pole. “No!” I shouted, because she was always hitting buttons and pushing levers, just to see what would happen. And it never ended well.
Instantly, a male voice came over the intercom. “Can I help you?” it asked.
“My mommy lost our car and we can’t find it,” the girl child announced. I was mortified, debating how to kill her and get away with it.
“I’ll send a car,” was the response. A few minutes later, a security guard showed up. I grudgingly explained that, yes, I’d lost our car in this vast lot. He told us that we couldn’t ride with him due to regulations, but he’d find my car and come back and tell me where it was. I was skeptical of this, since this lot seemed to hold enough cars to fill Guatemala but, surprisingly, he was back fairly quickly. He informed me of exactly where my car was, in a section far from where we’d been looking. Duh. We hoofed it over there and were relieved to get away.
This started a lifetime of experiences with my daughter, who always has the uncanny ability to find any lost thing. We started calling her “the finder.” She should be a private detective.
Nowadays, I drive a bright orange Subaru Crosstrek. I can’t recommend this highly enough. There are hardly any orange cars, so mine (I named her Clementine) always sticks out like a rose among the weeds. Actually, never mind. If you take my advice and get an orange car, then Clementine won’t be as easy to find. Get a neon pink one instead. And you’ll never be stranded again.