Friday night I stopped by the Sears in the Columbia Mall to get a spark plug for a leaf blower. Of course parking near the Sears upper level entrance was impossible on a Friday evening. I went down to the lower level and went into the merchandise pick up entrance. Winding my way through the lower level to the escalator I took note of the area around the escalator. Getting the spark plug took me about 10 minutes and I was back down on the lower level and out the entrance to the parking lot. I had parked down a row right out of the entrance and only about 5 cars in from the road. I looked for my car and started to become concerned that I couldn't find my car. Up and down the rows I went and still no car. I began to have the fear that my car had been stolen! First a dramatic call to my family that I needed a ride home and then a call to the police to report a stolen vehicle. I was told to watch for a police car that would meet me at the entrance to the merchandise pick up. I even started calculating how much I would get from insurance and how much I might need to buy another car.
I waited about 5 minutes when I noticed a police car pull up to an entrance just around the corner from where I was at. Walking over to the police car I suddenly realized I had walked out of the wrong entrance!!! A sense of excitement rose up in me as I considered that my car was now in the parking spot where I had left it. Sure enough there was my car in the place I had parked it. Now with a red face I went to the police person to report to my embarrassment what I had done. They were there with a couple of other people who I assumed were managers of the Sears store. When I told them what had happened they laughed, said they were happy to hear that I found my car and said it wasn't the first time this has happened.
P.S.
One more irony to this story is that before I went into the Sears store I had tried to help a man who had gone into the Mall so quickly that he wasn't paying attention to where he had parked his car. Just as I was about to help him look for his car he spotted his car. I know that we have all probably had this experience.
I've had the opposite experience as my years have accumulated. I used to lose my car so often in parking lots, on city streets, you name it ... that I've gotten smarter and better about tracking where I parked. Technology has helped too. I often take a pic of my nearby surrounds in a city, or put a GPS marker on my car, or take a photo of the aisle that I'm in or floor I'm parked on, or the numbered space, if such options exist. When approaching a large mall, I often mark a point as I approach the building and note to leave the building from that same spot. Some things get better with age!
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