Nurse: Did you forget something?
Me: No...my car...has been stolen.
Nurses: Here? In Preston? Really? Are you sure? Did you leave your keys in it?
Me: Yes, here. I'm pretty sure. Nope, keys are in my hand.
Nurses: Really?
Me: Really.
Nurses: Seriously?
Me: Seriously.
Nurse: Was it a nice car?
Me: It's a '95 Ford Taurus!
Nurse: Really? Seriously?
Me: yup.
Nurse dials police.
This was the first of several conversations like this. After I talked to the police on the phone and they were on their way, I called John. It went something like this:
Me: Hi, ummm...
John: Where are you?
Me: at the hospital still. The car got stolen.
John: .......(silence)........
Me: um, are you still there?
John: Yeah. Really? In Preston? Are you sure? Seriously? Did you leave the keys in it?
(sound familiar?)
The cop got there and he wasn't as surprised until he found out the keys were not in the ignition (which is usually the case in car theft in Preston), but were, in fact, in my hand. Apparently car thieves in Preston generally don't have to learn the fine art of hot-wiring a car, as there are so many options in Preston with the keys right in the ignition. This also begs the question, if you're going to hotwire a car, why choose the old Ford Taurus instead of the new Mercury next to it?
So anyway, Jackson called my dad and had the same conversation with him that I'd already had twice, and then I called Brett and had that conversation again. Brett came over to the hospital to see for himself that my car was, in fact, missing and I had not fallen off the deep end. The police report was done and Brett and Des left for home. My dad pulled in to take my back to his house and then the story got really interesting.
Brett pulled back in front of the hospital honking his horn and pushing somebody off the road who was in my car! Brett was yelling at this guy to get out of the car, the cops were pulling out their big club flashlights. Brett yells out to the cops "Are you guys going to come do your job, or do I need to pull him out the window?" (Thank you to the Preston PD for overlooking that comment.) The guy gets out of the car insisting that this is his friend Hailey's car. The cops cuff him and he is absolutely insisting that this is his friend's car. At this point, I'm thinking this guy is as high as a kite if he thinks he's going to convince me that this is not my car, so I start trying to prove that this is my car. "Look! Those are my bags, my coat, and my scriptures, with my name on them!" (I may have been slightly hysterical at this point. Maybe.)
Then I notice. There are keys in the ignition. They are not my keys. And my car is running. With someone else's keys in the ignition. I said as much and the policeman pulls the keys out of the car, takes my key and compares them. They are identical. Then he walks over the other white car parked next to where mine had been (remember the new Mercury? yup.) and gets in. He puts another key on the same key chain in that ignition and it starts.
Confused yet? I was. This poor guy had brought his wife into the emergency room. Her friend had come and told him to take here car (which he had never been in before) home to shower and change. He did that (or so he thought), comes back to the hospital and is nearly run off the road by some really angry guy shaped something like a Brama Bull (love ya Brett) ready to kick his butt, then is put in hand cuffs and accused of grand theft auto (and smoking in my car, which is to me, almost as bad). He was in cuffs for about 45 minutes while the police checked out his story, while his wife was inside the hospital in the emergency room. When all was said and done, the police took the cuffs off, he shook my hand and apologized profusely and asked me if he owed a couple of bucks for an air freshener (I may have chewed his butt a little about smoking in my car when I was in that hysterical mode). I told him the story was worth it, and he asked the police for a copy of the police report, because nobody was going to believe this! I, however, already had a copy of the police report. and here it is. so believe it. really. seriously.
This my number from the first 5k I ran.* I know that for a lot of people a 5k is almost nothing, but for me it was kind of big. It kept me motivated. It helped me remember that I can do things I never thought I would do. That run also helped me learn that running may not be the root of all evil and that humiliation does not have to be the automatic result of my attempts at physical activity in public. I keep this number up over my dresser to help me remember these things. So there Miss Fuhrman! 
Then back to P-town for the rodeo Parade...
