Yet another reason why I'm going to hell...

Did I ever tell you about the time I helped someone steal a car?

When Nigel and I were first married, we lived in a cottage/shack that shared a small parking lot with the duplex next door.

One night during Christmas time, I heard a car pull into our lot and a bunch of guys laughing. I didn’t think anything of it until the next morning when their car was still there -- and it remained there for over a month!

The car was a total junker with a handwritten Canadian license plate and the sunroof open. Since it was winter, the car was soon filling up with snow and feral cats.

My neighbor and I were getting sick of this abandoned/stolen car hogging up our precious few parking spaces. My neighbor called the police, but they wouldn’t do anything because I guess they were "confused" by the homemade foreign plates.

My neighbor came up with a clever plan of moving the car to the curb so that the city would tow it (since there’s no parking on the street). We started pushing the car when my neighbor says, “Hey, let’s see if there’s anything in the trunk.”

Maybe he was hoping for a dead body or something.

He pops open the trunk and there are some backpacks in there. One is filled with clothes and the other is filled with books, including a journal.

“Hey, what are you doing with my car?”

Not words I wanted to hear while I'm reading some guy’s diary and my neighbor is trying on his clothes.

“What are you doing leaving it in our parking space?” answered my brave neighbor.

Then the man proceeded to tell us how he bought the car from some college kids about a month ago, but he just left it in our lot and never got around to moving it.

My neighbor then strikes a deal, “Since it’s been in our lot for so long, we get to keep everything in the trunk.”

The man agreed and we emptied out the trunk and then helped him push it across the street to his house.

Now this is where the red flags should’ve gone up because he agreed to that ridiculous deal AND he didn’t have keys to the car.

About four months later, I get a knock at my door from a timid, young college student who shyly asks, “Do you know what happened to my car? I left it here at Christmas.”

I happily reply, “Yeah, the guy you sold it to came and got it.”

“What do you mean? I never sold my car.”

Oh, crap!!!

It turns out that he was heading home for the holidays, his car broke down and he got a ride from his friends. Then while home, his mother got sick and he couldn’t return to school the next semester. Of course by this time, the car and the guy across the street were both gone.

I did give him his books back – but feigned ignorance on the clothing.