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December 19, 2024
And then there was that time when someone stole the seats from my car.
It was the summer of 1985 and I was driving a sweet little, orange 1976 BMW 2002 at the time.
I remember it was 1985 because that was the last time Halley's Comet was approaching this planet on one of its regular 75-year orbits.
At the time, I was living in a townhouse in Oakton, VA that I had bought with my brother Mike.
He was a civilian employee with the Department of Defense working on Night Vision technology.
I was working for a small software start-up and Mike and I would regularly host some type of theme party and this happened just after we had hosted our "Welcome Halley's Comet" party.
For our parties we would typically provide a keg of beer and invite 50 or more people we knew or worked with.
Each of the parties had a theme and I would create flyers announcing the time, date and theme so that they could dress accordingly if they so desired.
We also made all of these events "boxer shorts" optional - so people could show up wearing boxer shorts if they wanted to.
That was mostly my brother's thing since he had a lot of friends who were weight lifters and would happily take the opportunity to show off their impressively toned lower limbs.
I remember one of his friends who competed in the Ms. Olympia contest for Finland attended a few.
For the Halley's Comet party I created a replica comet by stuffing a Styrofoam ball with sparklers and attaching it to a fishing line running from the master bedroom window - across the back yard filled with revelers - to a corner of the backyard fence.
I lit the sparklers and attached the comet to the fishing line with a paper clip and let it fly.
Voila - our very own Halley's Comet!
If you were there you know how spectacular that looked.
It was a couple of days after the Halley's Comet party on a Sunday when my brother stuck his head into my bedroom and announced "Looks like someone broke into your car and stole the seats. I am headed to Dulles to catch a flight to LA for a week so here are the keys to my truck."
"Wait, what did he say?"
I dragged myself from my bed and headed down the stairs and out the front door.
There, in front of the townhouse was my car with the doors wide open.
And sure enough when I looked inside it was clear that some late summer Grinch had taken the seats.
All the seats - the front bucket seats and the bench seat in the back.
That Grinch of a thief even took the horn buttons from the steering wheel.
The police were called and they arrived and filled out a report and said that it was most likely a spec job - meaning they had a shopping list because they took such small items as the horn buttons.
They also left my wallet untouched which I had tucked between the driver's seat and the shift console.
Since my brother had left the keys to his truck I decided I needed to swap my car from the spot in front of the house to one further away where the truck was parked.
But how do you drive a car without any seats?
You can't just sit on the floorboard because you can't see over the dashboard.
So I decided to use a plastic milk crate that we were using to store books in the basement.
It was close to the right height but turned out to be less than stable when I tried to press the clutch pedal to shift the manual transmission.
On my first attempt I found my self sliding back into the rear seating area.
After a few more attempts I was able to swap the car for the truck.
While a seat-less BMW is indeed a sad sight - it turns out I had the last laugh on the matter.
Unbeknownst to the thieves - those seats had been in the car two years earlier when I accidentally drove it into a creek minutes into a first date.
(You can read about that adventure here - https://tinyurl.com/5ha6cakj)
They had been submerged in creek water for a couple of hours and I had recently noticed that the stuffing and padding of the seats had gradually begun to rot due to the summer heat and their prolonged immersion in the creek water.
In the end I got brand new seats and the thieves ended up with the sinky rotten ones.
I am still kicking myself for getting rid of that car.
