It was a beautiful and warm night, well, as warm as a San Francisco night can get. I had just been to a wonderful event, and my friends and I were hanging out outside the venue in San Francisco’s Mission District, chatting, telling jokes, and laughing.
It was 11:30 and the event was winding down quickly. I asked my friends for directions to the freeway and said goodbye.
I was walking quickly and confidently, the way a woman has to walk alone late at night in an unknown area of a metropolitan city. There had been no parking spaces close to the venue when I had arrived, so I had ended up parking my little gold car, Nilgoon, on the next block. I got to the street and saw a gold car, but it wasn’t mine. I moved up the street and saw another gold car, not mine, then another, and this one wasn’t it either, darn it! What the heck?!! Where was my car?!!
As the panic started to hit home, I returned to the main street, walking down another long block, thinking maybe I had parked the car two blocks down and couldn’t remember it, walking faster and faster as the adrenaline started kicking in, but I already knew my car wouldn’t be on the next block because I knew I hadn’t walked this patch of the sidewalk before.
I thought of calling my friends whom I had left outside the venue when I left, but then I thought, nah, they didn’t offer to walk me to my car in the first place, so I shouldn’t trouble them with the process of looking for my car and waiting by my side for the police to arrive.
I turned on the next block and sure enough, my car wasn’t there, either. I pulled my cell phone out to call 911 when I saw a police car stop at the corner. Quickly, I walked over, waved at the officers, and explained to them that I couldn’t find my car and I wasn’t sure whether I should be reporting it as stolen. They were very nice. They asked me what make and color my car was and where I thought I had parked it. I must have sounded really distraught, because I could see the two of them taking pity on me, all the while talking to me, probably to ascertain whether I was drunk or not. Thank God I wasn’t! So they told me to get in the car and let them drive me around the few blocks to see if I could locate my car. I got in the back of the police car, you know, the criminals’ compartment, complete with that transparent (bullet proof?) divider in the middle! Heeh! That was a brand new experience!
We drove around for a while and finally found my little car on the street where I thought I had parked it, only one block over. I was ecstatic! The door handle in the back of a police car doesn’t work from the inside, did you know?!! Well, for obvious reasons, I guess (Duh!). The officers had to get out of the car to let me out into the balmy night.
I wonder if anyone has ever seen someone crawl out of the back seat of a police car, jump to her feet, hug and kiss the police officers and run away!
