That’s not my motivation today. I had a lousy day yesterday. I want to talk about it. It’ll be therapeutic. My twelve step group doesn’t meet till next Tuesday. (That is a lie. I don’t have a group. I do meet with a therapist on a semi-weekly basis, but he’s my brother-in-law; we don’t meet for therapy, we meet to eat.)

Wednesday night, we got to our small group meeting in “Backwoods, WV” (name changed to protect the innocent), 45 minutes from home, on time. We were glad to get there. I parked in the wrong place, and when I endeavored to start the car to move it to the right place…

it wouldn’t start.

Full disclosure: it did this about two weeks ago to my wife. She called me, I walked her through some ideas, and the car started. She thought I was a genius. I was lucky.

This time, no matter what I (or any of the other guys in our small group) tried, the car would not start. Plenty of juice in the battery, but the starter… she no starting.

So, the family whose house we were meeting at loaned us a car (Thanks!), I told them that I was leaving my keys in the center console, and I’d get it figured out from home in the morning. We packed up the borrowed car and drove the 45 minutes or so home, went to bed, and I tried not to think about car trouble.

See, I’m that kind of a guy. I have zero ability with cars. None. Zilch. Nada. I can change a flat in an emergency (although not quickly), and I might be able to change the oil if you held a gun to my head. (Why are you holding a gun to my head for an oil change? Hold a gun to my head for $25 and have Wal*Mart change your oil, for goodness sake.) So, when something goes wrong with my car, I get mighty agitated (you know, like a washing machine). I flip flop between worry that the problem will be prohibitively expensive to fix and worry that the mechanic will take advantage of me.

Anyway, I finally managed to get to sleep. We had a plan for the morning — around 9, call the mechanic, figure out what he wanted, and then call the roadside assistance people and get the car towed.

We woke up early. Just that sort of a morning. I’m an early-to-rise sort of guy anyway. My family, not usually, but hey… I’ll take it. We went through our usual morning routines (Luke: “Me-meal!” Rebecca: “Yes, I’ll make you oatmeal.”) I got out of the shower and started picking up whatever I needed to take back to my office with me (cell phone, laptop, dayplanner), when right beside my cell phone, what did I spy?

I spy with my little eye the key to the car that is 45 minutes away.

Yep.

Idiot.

So, now, even if I call a tow truck, they can’t move my car without possibly damaging it. The mechanic certainly can’t check if the starter is the problem if he has no ability to start the car. I really messed this one up.

So, I hopped in the car and drove back to Backwoods, WV.

At that point, the day mostly turned for the better. I got to have a lovely breakfast with family, see my brother by marriage’s farm (the man has got a view, let me tell you. If you want to see majesty, I can tell you just who to call). The tow company got there, eventually, and did a respectable job with my car. The mechanic (who I’d never met, but is likely related to my wife… seriously. West Virginia!) got the part quickly, and got it fixed in a better-than-respectable amount of time (I tend to think anything “Same-day” in auto mechanics is downright miraculous). The mechanic even did me the favor of pointing out that my tags were expired. I should’ve known that, but it had escaped my attention.

Here’s where it kind of turns again. I thanked him and paid him and got on the road headed home. I looked at the clock in the car and thought, 1:00… not at all bad. I called my wife, told her I was on my way and that I planned to work about 4 hours when I got home to make up for part of the lost day. She stammered a reply, which was strange but… it felt like a long day, so I didn’t question it.

10 minutes later I turned on the radio. None of the presets worked. Hmm, I thought. I guess at some point, the battery got disconnected. That makes sense actually, starter and all. It hit me. The clock was wrong.

Yeah, it was 3:10. My day was shot.

I was almost home when I remember the dead tags. I called my wife and said, “Rebecca, you need to call about our tags. Apparently they’re expired, and we’re going to end up getting pulled over.” We talked about a couple of other things, and as I was winding down the conversation, I saw a too-familiar sight around these parts: the town of Fayetteville PD’s SUV pulled out from its spot on Route 19 behind me.

“Honey, I’ll be a few minutes,” I said. “I’m getting pulled over for those dead tags.”

No lie.