Grand Theft Auto

I really had a great Father’s Day this year. It started with a text message from our 22-year-old son, currently studying in Nepal. He thanked me for being his dad and helping make him the man he is today. Our 14-year-old daughter wouldn’t leave my side, hugging me and pampering me the entire day. And I’m pretty thankful that my wife decided to give me a break and volunteered to drive us around the entire day.

That meant I could do what she normally does take a cat nap while riding to our destination. First we went to place flowers on both our father’s graves. After that, the girls wanted to take me to lunch. I dozed off and awoke when we arrived at Ala Moana. After the meal, they wanted to take me shopping so they could buy me some new athletic shoes for my Father’s Day gift. Naturally we stopped at some other stores of their interest, but I didn’t mind since I was having a great day. When we were finished, my wife guided us back to where she parked her car. She pulled out her remote, pointed it at the car like changing channels on a TV, but the car wouldn’t open. She kept waving the remote around but no luck.

That’s when I noticed that the car she was trying to open wasn’t hers. It was an identical color and model, so I couldn’t really blame her for making the mistake. She started looking around the lot for her car. When she arrived at where she was positive she parked, the space was empty. She cried out, “Oh my God, Ron, someone stole my car!” We kept walking around in circles on the chance that she was off by a few stalls, but no, the car was gone.

She was about to call 911 when our daughter spotted a car that was parked nearly seven lanes away my wife’s car. She had totally gotten her bearings mixed up. She kept looking at me as we walked to her car for any indication that I was going to make fun of her. It took everything I had not to say anything when she said, “You’re going to write about this, aren’t you?”

My kids aside, I couldn’t have asked for a better Father’s Day gift.