Nobody else gets to drive my car anymore. Or, at least until people stop giving into the temptation to honk my horns–for no apparent reason–whenever I’m not around. Apparently, the urge to honk screws up the weak-minded.
Take the middle of last week, for example. Tuesday, after getting home from work, my car decided to eat my car keys. The ignition switch would NOT turn anywhere except to the START position, leaving the key in the ON position (and, thus, the engine running). I was able to turn off the engine by taking off the cover over the steering column, and pulling a plug out of the back of the ignition switch. The car needed to go to the dealership, but I also needed to go to work the next day. So, my dad and grandpa told me they would take it to the shop, and I could drive my mom’s Lincoln to work. So, I get a call at work the next day; the dealership found and fixed the problem, and it wasn’t expensive at all. I paid for the fix over the phone, I checked out the car when I got home, everything worked just fine.
Fast-forward to Sunday afternoon, as we’re getting ready to go to church, and my grandpa tells me what he and my dad really did when they took my car to the shop. They pulled the car into the service garage, told the mechanics about the ignition problem, and then they added that the horn was ‘acting up’ and they should check it out. My grandpa told me that it almost “rattled every screw out of the building”, and that the mechanics never did blow the horn again.
Also on Sunday, my dad, grandparents, and my uncle took my car home from the church morning service, because my dad had to go to work soon, and my grandparents had to cook lunch. I was left with my mom, and we took her Lincoln home later.
While my grandpa was later telling me of the garage incident, he remarked how many times they blew the horn on the way home from church earlier. He told me what happened to the dog as it chased them down the road as they drove past it, but he never would tell me about the other 3 times they blew it.
So I will be taking steps to limit other people driving my car, and I will be looking into installing a toggle switch to cut the circuit between the horn button and the shocker valve. I can hardly wait to get a call while I’m at work, and someone telling me they horned a cop or a mental patient, and watch my car being towed to the impound on the 6:00 news…
