One of the Citiots earns his nickname …

I’ve been in Collingwood since yesterday, and went out with my Collingwood gal pals for our monthly WoW get-together last evening. (More on the Women of Wordstock later – I promise!) As always, we had a fabulous time together.

Dave and our dog Lola McPoopie – yes, she has her own last name – are scheduled to arrive this evening. Dave and I switched cars for this trip, allowing me to enjoy Collingwood without the responsibility of taking care of the dog. No late night, middle of the night, or early morning walks for me. Yay! Since Lola is only allowed to travel in the oldest car, the switch made sense. Until last evening.

Having left my iPhone downstairs to charge, I do not hear the phone ring this morning. When I do retrieve it, I listen to a voice mail from Dave, asking me if Pam, my trusty GPS (Pam – “map” spelled backwards – clever, or cutesy? I digress …) was in my glove box. I don’t see why it wouldn’t be; it’s where she always lives. He asks me because he did not lock my car when he came home at 7:30 last evening. Oh, he locked it at 1:30AM when he went to bed, but for six hours my car sat, unsecured, in our driveway.

When Dave got into my car this morning, he noticed that there were several napkins strewn on the floor of the passenger seat. These would be the extra napkins from Subway. They always give people too many! He also noticed that his work keys were missing from the center console. Oh oh.

Now, I don’t really care about losing Pam. It is annoying and inconvenient, but Dave did invite a thief to steal it. What I do care about is the key ring. We may know that the keys are not to our house, but the thief won’t. And since we’re both away this weekend, I’m nervous. In my mind, Dave has now hung a giant neon sign on our front door that says “Open”. Come on in, thieves! We are too stupid to lock our car. Why not give the house a try? I’m sure you can find a way in! I go into survivalist mode.

I send an email to my neighbours Wendy, Janet and Sandi, who are now on high alert. I call our Toronto real estate agent Brent; our back yard was staged and photographed on Wednesday (more on that later, too!). The pool area was left unlocked today, in case the stagers were coming by to pick up their furniture. They are not. (Their pillows, towels and cushions are all under my patio umbrella, but that may not stop them from getting wet, what with this weekend’s predicted rainfall. Oh, well.)

Sandi gets conscripted by Wendy to go lock our pool gate, since Wendy was out of the house when I sent the email request. She does so in a flash. Wendy will park her car in our driveway this weekend, and her husband John will be extra vigilant of our back yard.

I email Dave about half a dozen times, with instructions on what to do to secure our home. This includes locking our screen doors, adding a padlock to the first gate into our back yard (from the inside, so you’d need to be in the yard in order to access it), and putting all of our poolside furniture into the pool area because the stagers removed almost all of it. It’s crowded by the pool now, but who cares? I also ask him to hide the key to the double deadbolt we have on the back door. Dave installed the kind of lock that requires the use of a key on either side of the door, but we usually leave the key right beside the door. Counterproductive? Perhaps, but convenient when life is good and you haven’t been ripped off.

There is a bright side to this story: I have amazing neighbours. And the thief was too stupid to notice that there was a 160GB iPod docked inside the glove box. If he had taken that, I would have been really pissed!

There is no need to be angry with Dave. I’m sure he’s far madder at himself than I could ever be. So let’s leave it at that. But I can say that he has now officially earned the nickname “citiot”. Though in fairness, this could happen anywhere idiots leave their cars unlocked. Another lesson learned.