Anyhow, we went through the whole rigamarole. Talked to the insurance. Talked to police. Had it towed to a place. Had it towed to another place. Had it checked out, then towed to another place for Reasons, I guess.
Long story short, the cost of fixing the damages exceeds the value of the car. It’s totaled.
Even longer story short, this is possibly the best thing that could have happened.
Look, we’re cheap frugal people. We try to live below our means. He doesn’t take out loans or buy new cars because the way that car valuation works is bad and silly. I don’t take out loans or buy any cars because my eyes are mostly decorative at this point. We make it work.
This is how he was able to haggle a really good price on his last car. Couple that with trading in the car that got poisoned in Mississippi, and the total that he’d paid is actually significantly less than its value. Like, it would cost more to replace the car at its current book value than he originally paid for it. And, depending on how the law shakes out, we might still be able to trade in or sell the totaled car (for parts, but still).
“But Jec,” you may be saying, “You guys’re still out a car, and that sucks.” And yes, you are correct. It is less than optimally convenient.
However, after the Mabon celebration (where we accidentally gatecrashed a youth group, my Handsome Assistant almost got hypothermia, and we ended up sleeping in the trunk), we came to the conclusion that it might not be a completely terrible idea to look at other models of car once this one bit the dust. I suggested a wagon, because we could use the extra cargo space. He wanted a hybrid or EV. We kind of shrugged it off for the time being, because his current car was working fine and we weren’t in any rush.
Now, not only do we have a reason to look at cars that better fit our needs, but we also have some extra dosh to do it with.
I don’t know how we ended up benefitting from what is, objectively, a really sucky situation, but I’m happy. ᕕ ( ᐛ )ᕗ
From the looks of things, the thief had brought a bat (probably to break a window, if need be). They ended up not using it, opting instead to rip the handle off the door and toss the bat onto the floor. From there, they tore off the ignition cover and used a USB cable to steal the car. It pretty much follows the exploits pointed out on TikTok beat for beat.
The good news is, the car wasn’t severely damaged. Believe it or not, it’s still drivable — as long as you don’t mind having to open the door without a handle and start it up with a USB cable. The bad news is that this kind of theft is so common that it can take a long time to get replacement parts, so the car’s going to be out of commission for a while.
My Handsome Assistant had just gotten the car detailed literally days before this happened, so it was really disheartening to see how grungy it is. There was half a bag of Cheerios on the floor. Empty soda cans. A dirty hoodie. Also, an unopened bag of Takis.
For now, we’ve got a rental via the insurance company. As frustrating and upsetting as this experience has been, in retrospect it’s also really funny. They tried on the sunglasses, and still never found the tracking tile in the case, for crap’s sake. They took the car for a joy ride, smoked a bunch of weed, and apparently ate half a bag of dry Cheerios! There is a comically tiny Little League bat! I can’t not find this hilarious!
He left everything at the tow lot.
The Takis went uneaten. They weren’t opened or suspicious or anything, but it was the principle of the thing.
Okay. I admit. I can get a little lazy when it comes to warding things. I didn’t do anything to protect the car. I’m not even sure I could’ve made that much of a difference, considering my Handsome Assistant apparently owns what could be considered “the most stealable car in America.” Now, there are aftermarket updates to make cars more secure, but we only buy used cars and were unaware that this particular model came with the equivalent of a flashing neon sign that says HI!!! STEAL ME! :)))).
I’ll be honest. I don’t like cars. I never have. I love road trips, but if it was possible to do them entirely by train, I would. There are multiple reasons for this:
My first significant experience was my mother’s Oldsmobile Firenza that used to stall out at every intersection, once got the interior rained on so bad that it smelled like vomit for a decade, and used to make me dizzy and carsick the second I sat in it. Even when it wasn’t moving.
My second was wanting to eat/play with icicles like the big kids could. The only one my tiny little five-year-old hands could reach was a kind of lumpy, grayish one growing on the muffler of my grandma’s car. I snapped it off, licked it, and became violently ill for three days.
My third was the time I thought a car accident had turned my dad into a zombie.
My fourth most significant experience with motor vehicles was being run over by one.
My fifth was dating someone who managed to wreck multiple cars over the course of a two-and-a-half-year relationship.
Cars and I have always had a wary, distant, reluctant alliance, at best. It has never really worried me, though. If anything, it seems appropriate. I’m too blind to drive, and I’m strongly against the idea of car-centric societies. It makes sense that cars’d have it out for me.
I don’t know what picture to post with this. Here’s Pye, being a massive arcing chungus in my Handsome Assistant’s office.
Anyway, all of this is to say that I was gently woken up early Wednesday morning by my Handsome Assistant going, “Hey, Jeccas? Do you remember if I… did anything weird with my car yesterday?”
“Buh?” I replied.
(Because I have been mind-poisoned by the internet, I did not initially think “did anything weird” meant “parked it somewhere unusual.” My imagination went somewhere far worse, but that’s neither here nor there.)
Anyway, it turns out someone’d stole it. If there’s a thing I dislike more than cars themselves, it is having to have basically any contact with police ever. Now a car was making me do that thing. Even if all we wanted was for insurance to cover the loss, we needed a police report. Butts.
Here he is snorkeling.
The whole process pretty much turned my Handsome Assistant into Liam Neeson from Taken. He took his motorcycle out for a ride, half to calm down and half to see if he could find the car himself.
“They say that most stolen cars are found in the same area,” he pointed out.
He was only gone for a minute or two before he came back.
“You know, I just remembered something…”
My Handsome Assistant is both handsome and helpful. He’s very smart, good at his job, and a caring, attentive, equitable contributor to our relationship. He is, however, extremely forgetful. Between that and my own memory deficiencies, it’s amazing we haven’t burned the house down making pancakes yet.
Take his sunglasses. When he started working for his current employer, he had to make a few wardrobe upgrades. Not just suits and ties, but smaller things — a watch. Nicer shoes. Sunglasses. He started with a pair of Ray-Bans, which he constantly lost. Once, they were found in the attic by Pye, who firmly insisted on pointing out these weird, boring objects that very obviously did not belong in his play space. Now, he’s also got a less-fancy-but-paradoxically-much-more-expensive pair of prescription sunglasses.
To avoid losing them, he invested in some trackers. As long as they’re nearby, or at least near other trackers, he can see their location on his phone.
Since he only really uses his sunglasses for driving, he keeps them in his car.
The car that got stolen.
Here is Pye posing for Michelangelo.
Within minutes, he had found an entire location history tracking the car’s journey to an adjacent county. On the highway. Every house it had parked in front of.
After a few more minutes, he was triangulating locations and planning a sneaky drive past some of the places where the car had been.
“Please tell me you’re not going to try to steal it back.”
“No, no,” he assured me, “That’d be a bad idea. Besides, then I’d be driving around in a car that’s reported stolen, which would cause problems.”
He didn’t find the car itself, but he came back with a map of all of the places it could’ve conceivably been hidden overnight. A cluster of bushes. A covered driveway. Under a bridge over a small creek bed.
Here he is with a whale.
Anyhow, the car was found yesterday morning. We also still have the (very fancy) rental that the insurance company provided for 50 days, so that’s neat. It’ll be a few days (the police still haven’t processed the original report) before he can fill out the paperwork to get it back, and we don’t know what kind of condition it’s in, but it’s found.
The tracking tag tracked the car all the way to the tow lot. Thieving jerk never even noticed the sunglasses.
Marble Crow 