Comedy of Errors

Comedy of Errors

 

I was on a three day road trip to get pictures along the Lincoln Highway. It was the morning of the 3rd day and I was repacking the van with all my stuff. I was checking out of the motel room by just leaving the key on the table by the window. 

 

As I was about to get my self into the van if noticed I had not brought my two pillows from the room. Now I have not taken my own pillows on trips in the past but I thought about how comfortable mine were ac compared to the overly puffy motel kind.

 

Since I had to go up to the office counter to get a second key I routinely locked the van doors. I don’t like leaving my camera bag unattended.  My usual routine has been to put my cellphone and keys on the front seat as I climb in.

 

The order of events became crucial. First I tossed the phone and keys in then noticed the absence of the pillows. I locked the doors and closed the front one. In that moment my realization of the disaster unfolded with a string of profanities. 

 

With a 2nd key to the room I could easily get my pillows but now I was locked out of the car. Also no cellphone. 

 

My morning plans involved drive onto Regent Square to meet my two sisters for breakfast at 9:00 at a place called Famous Café. They were going to walk over the four blocks. Now I could not let them know is was on an indefinite delay. I worried they would worry at my very unusual absence and adherence to plan. 

 

My van has Onstar capabilities but my account has been dormant for a couple of years. I hoped they would relent and use their infrastructure to unlock the door. I did not get the chance to even implore their generosity. I had no recollection of their service number. It was in my phone. Likewise I don’t recall either of my sisters’ numbers. 

 

I thought that the number might by something like 800-ONSTAR but that did not have enough digits. I reverted to calling AAA road service. They said “it’s now 8:43 and the service truck will be there as soon as possible.” That could be an hour or longer, I thought .

 

Fortune smiled on me and he arrived at about 9:00. I was back in business. The phone log showed my sister had texted the Appleby’s I suggested we go to would not open until 11:00 and the Famous Café was close by.

 

My call to her let the two of them know it would be about 9:30 for me to get there. She replied “we will go back in the house and have another coffee before walking the short distance to the café.

 

Now here is where the morning events went completely off the rails. We were just sitting talking and finishing breakfast and a coffee refill when a young man with short red hair stopped at our table and got my younger sister’s attention. He was followed to our spot by a female police officer from the local community of Edgewood. Todd continued with “your dog is running around the neighborhood and you front door is open. The police are there.”  A friend of Todd's saw us at the corner cafe and when he saw Todd back at the “scene of the crime” he said I know where Erika is. Todd came back to tell her about the "Active Snooter" situation unfolding at her address.

 

She apologized saying this doesn’t usually happen. The officer assured her there was no real problem but they could not catch the dog. My sister, the redheaded neighbor and the officer all walked back to her house.

 

Matilda by Vladimir Sowerder

I said to my sister, "It's great to go where everybody knows your name." Everything that that morning would have been different if Todd's friend did not know my sister and walked by or I hadn't locked my keys in the car. Even further deep, if I hadn't decided to take my own pillows on my trip and forgotten them in the motel room, the Matilda events would never have manifest in this reality. My other sister and I wrapped up our coffees and arranged to pay the bill. She volunteered to pay for everything. 

 

I wanted to get gas at the corner station adjacent to the corner Café before hitting the road for my Sunday drive home. With all the travel junk in my van there is only one available seat. Earlier we decided we would figure that out later. The dog incident solved that seating shortage. 

 

When we were all back at her house we engaged in some of the most uproarious laughter in a long time. 

 

There were two police cars on the street by her house. One from each of Wilkinsburg and Edgewood. Matilda, the dog, had been running free in multiple jurisdictions. The borough line cuts diagonally across her street in the block next over.  

 

The police said Matilda had been down by such-and-such street and up the other way a few blocks. All over the neighborhood apparently. 

 

I said there were two police cars but what you did not seen was they knew all the places Matilda had been straying. The police had been tracking her movements for nearly an hour. They could have had a helicopter over head. “They had a bear in the air,” I quoted from the audio recording Convoy from the 1970s.

 

After we recovered from the first round of laughter, I added, “wait until you see the 27, 8 by 10 color glossy photos with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one describing the quote unquote - Scene of the Crime." Whereupon we reprised our gaffaws and chortles. My sister said she wasn't going to tell Peter, her husband, anything about this incident when he got home. There was a consensus of "good luck with that" since someone in the neighborhood would certainly approach him about the hoopla at his address on this otherwise quiet Sunday morning.