On Thursday afternoon, I rolled out of my house, ready to pick Scarlett up from school. My sister-in-law, Beverley, was the driver that day, and she walked out behind me, pressing the button that opens the side door of the van. As the ramp unfolded, I saw that my path was blocked—bizarrely—by the fat black Honda instruction manual that normally resides in the glove box. I also saw that the driver’s seat was fully reclined, as though someone had been sleeping in the car.

Later, Bev joked that she thought maybe I had made Rob sleep there the night before in a moment of irritation. I laughed. “There’s no way your brother would ever sleep in the car or even on the couch unless it was his choice.” Rob is very, very stubborn, which is irrelevant to this story, but I felt like sharing it anyway. Maybe it’s a foreshadowing thing. I guess we’ll see.

Upon closer look at the van, we realized that all the contents of the glove box were strewn around the floor. I called Rob.

“Did you put the van driver’s seat into a lying down position and empty the glove box onto the floor of the car last night?” I asked conversationally.

“No,” he answered slowly, as though it had not been an entirely normal question.

“Then my second question,” I continued, “is did you lock the car last night?”

I was pretty calm about the whole thing, because there was nothing of value in the car, no windows were broken, and even though it’s kind of a grubby feeling to know that someone has been rifling through your stuff, it can’t be that bad if they didn’t take anything.

“Shit,” Rob said. “I don’t think I did lock it.”

“It’s ok,” I told him. “There was nothing in it.”

Which is when he said

“Is the parking placard there?”

And my mood plummeted, because of course

“Dammit! It’s not.”

I spent three minutes in a fit of rage and profanity, and then called the non-emergency police number, where they told me I could stay on the phone for 30 minutes to file a report or do it myself online. I chose the latter, because even though it would be physically harder, Scarlett was about to get into the car and I didn’t want her to know anything about this.

I then called the DMV, which was experiencing a 60-minute hold time, but a nice automated voice offered me the opportunity to receive a call back. After missing the first call back, I did that whole thing again, and got a human on the line several hours later.

The woman at the DMV was sympathetic, and seemed helpful and efficient. “We’ll just send another one out to you,” she said. “I’m sorry that people can be so horrible.”

But— evil laugh—we all know that things at the DMV are never that easy. I give you Exhibit A and Exhibit B.

The DMV still has my address wrong, even though it’s correct on both my ID card and our vehicle registration. So they couldn’t mail the placard. I would have to go in. [I imagine these words in bleeding black ink, and I don’t think I’m being dramatic.]

“The next appointment is in two weeks,” the woman said.

I must’ve been sputtering a little bit, because she went back to her screen and told me that since I was in a wheelchair, I could just go in without an appointment and try my luck.

So I spent this morning driving through a rainstorm to get to that place I can’t seem to avoid: the DMV. It’s gotten to the point where I recognize people there. The hard-nosed security guard who yells at everyone to sit down unless it’s their exact appointment time. The balding Asian woman at Window 19 who I always get paired with. We exchanged pleasantries. I was in and out in 40 minutes, with a brand new blue placard.

I thanked everyone for agreeing that it is pretty heinous to steal someone’s disabled parking placard, even if their husband left the door open.

“Is always the husband,” interjected an enormous Russian man with long curly blond hair, who was at the window next to mine.

Poor Rob. Of course it’s not his fault that our privacy was violated, and that I now know certain DMV employees well enough to send them a Christmas card. Still, maybe he should sleep in the car for a night or two.

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