Hello everyone, been awhile, but I’m back with another story time.
This one is about quarters. As in the coin.
I know, you must be thinking “how could you possibly have a story about a specific type of coin??” Well it also relates to my Chevy Spark, and everything about that car spawns stories galore.
So quarters.
Back in undergrad, after I got my Chevy Spark I mostly didn’t drive it except to travel between my childhood home and my college town. Otherwise, it mostly just sat in the parking lot of my college apartment. That town had a lot of trees from all over the world, and the parking lot rarely saw sun from the shade of those trees. This meant I didn’t have to worry about sun damage, however these trees were VERY sappy. My Spark got coated in the sap so much that one time it took several minutes to open the driver’s door. However, because I wasn’t driving much, I didn’t really pay much attention to this.
Fast forward a bit to just before the rodent nest issue (have I told that story yet?) My mom was visiting and we needed to pack up my car to head back to my childhood home. My car was so sticky and grimy, it needed to be washed before it could be packed. We eventually found a car wash, but it was one of those coin operated stalls.
Here’s where the quarters finally enter the story. This car was going to need several scrubs in the stall, so instead of going to some store getting a pack of gum and asking for the change in quarters, we went to the bank and withdrew some money in rolls of quarters.
After that we went to the coin operated car wash, and washed my car.
“What?” you may be asking. “That’s it? That’s all you had to say and you claim this story is about quarters?”
Patience, this was just the background of where the quarters came from!
After washing my car, there was maybe two and a half rolls of quarters leftover, which my mom told me to keep in my car to have on hand to wash the sap off my car regularly (it had already started chipping the paint and the windshield coating). I guess spoiler alert, I never did end up going back to that coin operated car wash, but still my car got washed more regularly after that (it also stayed with my parents for a semester because of various mechanical issues that happened right after the first part of this story). Regardless, I’m sure my mom meant for me to put the quarters away somewhere in my car, but I didn’t. They were just left out in the open, a big pile of quarters and a couple more still wrapped rolls, easily visible with just a glance through any window of that car.
At this point I would like to remind (or perhaps bring up, as I can’t recall what I have said in previous stories right now) you all that my Spark was broken into multiple times. Every single time had been after obtaining the quarters.
“Oh,” you’re thinking, “that’s what this story is about: don’t leave money openly visible in your car or it’ll get broken into.”
No. Not at all. Those quarters were NEVER stolen. They were not stolen during the Saran Wrap incident, when my glove box was rifled through. They were not stolen when my car was broken into while living in a gated apartment complex. They weren’t even stolen when my car was left on the side of the highway and just about everything inside plus a wheel and the secondary catalytic converter was stolen.
Those quarters were never disturbed.
I still think about that sometimes, honestly it’s incredible. But ya, that seems to be how it goes: the dumbest move I could have made and yet it’s never the expected outcome of said dumb move.
