To Lock or Not To Lock

Families are different, and one fundamental difference between Alan's family and mine is the propensity to lock. Alan's folks are lock-ers and many times in our marriage we have argued about his locking me out of the house or the car. My family tends to leave things unlocked, leave keys in the car, be generally laissefaire about "security" issues. This difference was highlighted once again in a dramatic way Friday night/Saturday morning. Oh, my family is FULL of adventure. Here is my version of the story.


Alan and I both had a hard week. Friday night we took off to Ninety Six to board the bunny at the farm and to have dinner with John, Kathryn and Bob. Drove by the football game (Ninety Six beat Calhoun Falls handily) and generally enjoyed the evening. A good start to our nine day vacation.


Got to my mom's house to spend the night about midnight. Mama has been sick all week and we had planned a family meeting for Saturday. The agenda changed about 2:30 a.m. when the highway patrol called to ask me if I knew who might have wrecked my Daddy's truck on Richland Road in front of the Methodist church. After I checked to make sure Mama hadn't lost her mind and gone out in the truck, Alan and I went to meet the patrolman to reclaim the truck. Sometime after we arrived at midnight someone stole the truck from Mama's driveway and apparently took it for a joy ride, as nothing else was stolen from the house and the truck wasn't damaged, except for a flat tire and broken side mirror. The driver had crashed through a Bridge Closed sign. We found it EXTREMELY ironic that the truck was wrecked in Richland. We joked the truck could have driven itself there.


Once we finished with the officer, we pulled a nasty, but completely unintentional, trick on my brother by leaving the truck in his driveway without explanation. The next morning he too thought perhaps our mother had lost her mind. He said it NEVER occurred to him that the truck had been stolen and returned to his driveway. Well, of course not.


We also managed to lock ourselves out of Mama's house on Saturday, so locking became a continuing theme to the weekend. Mercifully, Mama seems to be on the road to recovery and no damage was done.