No need to be so alarmed

Yesterday afternoon a new email notification box popped up on my screen while I was sitting at my desk writing a brief. The sender was someone in management of the office building where I work, and it went out to everyone in the building. (Several hundred people, I'd guess.) The subject was "car alarm." And somehow I knew, without having any basis whatsoever, just a gut feeling, but I knew that the email was referring to my car.

The email described a car parked in the back parking lot, and said that the car alarm was going off. And sure enough, the car it described, license plate number included, was mine.

Annoyed and embarrassed, I trudged down to the back door of the office building and then crossed through the sea of cars out back towards the area of the parking lot where I always park. Which would be the actual back corner of the back parking lot, since I'm always arriving a minute or two or ten late, and the lot is always filled up by that point. I was grateful at least to notice that I couldn't hear a car alarm going off anywhere. It must have shut itself off finally, I thought. Keys in hand, I glanced from car to car once I got to that particular corner of the lot, searching out my car. I always park in that same area, but not always in the same exact spot, you see. So I'm looking, and I'm looking, and ... I'm not seeing my car. Anywhere.

I thought for sure my eyes were just fooling me at first. But no; my car wasn't there. Suddenly a bad feeling shot through my whole system. Goosebumps raised on my arms. And I thought to myself: "OH. HOLY. CRAP. MY CAR IS GONE. THAT'S WHY THE ALARM WAS GOING OFF; SOMEBODY WAS ACTUALLY BREAKING INTO MY CAR. AND HOLY MOTHER OF GOD, THEY FUCKING STOLE IT!!!!!!!!!!!"

My next thoughts were very quick and jumbled together and random. I couldn't sort them all out for you, but it went something like this: "i can't believe someone stole my fucking car. what do i do now? maybe it's not stolen. no, shit, it is, it's not here anywhere! wait, do i see it going down the street? nope. ok, should i call the cops? why didn't the fucking person who reported the fucking alarm going off say someone was fucking breaking into it? maybe they didn't notice. that bitch who sent the email could've stopped this though! or not. why the fuck didn't someone yell stop? there are people out here. hey, people, where'd my car go? maybe i should ask someone if they saw someone driving off in my car. or maybe i should go inside and call 911. shit, what the fuck am i going to do without a car? oh shit, this fucking sucks man!!"

That's pretty much how my train of thought went. The most important point here being, I stood around in that parking lot for at least a little while, looking around like an idiot, with huge disbelieving eyes, long enough to think about all that shit and to try to figure out what to do next.

And then it hit me: "Oh, oh wait ... wait just a second ... did I park back here this morning? Ummmmmm .... hold on .... ohhhhhh, yeah, that's right, I was running late, and I was in a bad mood, and I noticed that a couple of those spots near the building's entrance that are reserved for people who carpool together were empty, and I pulled into one of those. Well, shit, I guess that means my car's probably not stolen."

So I made my way back towards the part of the parking lot with all the "carpool" signs, (part of the office's effort to encourage people to ride in to work together to save gas and make less pollution for the environment and all that shit), and there was my car. Safe and sound.

I figured someone must have accidentally bumped into it real hard and set off the alarm. Probably what I get for parking in the carpool spot when I'm not in a carpool, I thought. Karma.

This morning I was tempted once again to pull into one of those carpool spots that I could tell was empty when I got to work. But, thinking about my lesson in karma from yesterday, I headed on back to the back corner of the parking lot, and parked in my usual place.

This afternoon, I got another email from the office manager, going out to the whole building. Once again, it said car alarm. Once again, it described my car. Then it said "Your car alarm is going off. Again." Motherfucker.