My Brilliant Mind

-3 degrees Fahrenheit. Cold enough to freeze your lungs if you stand outside too long. Cold enough to warrant warming up my car before heading home for the night from work. Cold enough to be feeling warm and generous, and capable of making the offer to start my bosses car which wasn't exactly an offer made from the goodness of my heart, but one that was more or less made to keep him from going out and starting up the mess that currently is mine.

That being said, I hit the cold with two sets of car keys in hand. One set mine. One set his. And just about all of me evidently confused...

Starting my own car was like putting icing on a cake. After all, expectations of success aren't a far stretch of the imagination when you're accustomed to turning a key and hearing a motor hum.

Bursting with overconfidence, I walked the distance between my car and his, pressing down the button to unlock his truck. And when no answering lights flashed me in return, I simply thought it odd that Myles's hadn't bothered to lock it at all.

Climbing up into his truck (and let me point out that when you're as short as I am, the term climbing can be used on any vehicle that's high enough to need running boards, as well as a running start, in order for me to clear the front seat without falling on my ass) I popped myself into the driver's seat, slid the key into the ignition, pressed it forward and then found myself wondering where it was that I went wrong when nothing happened.

"Hmmmm..." I thought to myself, "Maybe there's some special catch to get this key to unlock the ignition." And so I tried again. And then again. Then held the key out in front of my face to take a good hard look at it and make sure it was indeed a key used for starting cars. And then tried one last and final time.

Still nothing...

And that's when the thought occurred to me that something about this cozy little scene wasn't quite right. Having traveled in Myles's truck before on various life threatening excursions, I suddenly remembered something I hadn't quite taken in when I had given the truck a cursory glance. The truck I was in was much smaller than it should have been.

If I could have sunk down in the seat in shame any further than I did, I would have been on the floor. In fact, the only thing that kept me from doing just that was the thought that if I waited much longer the true owner of the truck I was illegally trying to start might come out and ask me a few most likely very embarrassing questions of his own. Most likely one that would have started out with, "What are you doing in my truck?"

Hightailing it out of there like my pride and reputation were on the line, I scanned the parking lot for the vehicle in question and finally found it...

Right next to mine. (Imagine that...)

Starting the correct vehicle (finally) and laughing myself silly all the way back inside the office, I had no intention of sharing the story of my latest I'm a complete moron mishap in the parking lot. After all, one doesn't always want to paint one's foibles in the harsh light of stupidity just to tickle the funny bone of someone else.

And I would have succeeded. In fact, I was this close. Close right up until the moment Myles called me from the other room and said, "Did you have a problem out there? I saw the lights flash but it seemed to take you a while to start it."