Missed Picture...

For the past several years, I have kept my digital camera at the ready for those occasions where I get a glimpse of something that is just too good not preserve for future viewing or more often, share with readers here. I am pretty quick with the camera, and often, my wife acts as a spotter, alerting me to something worth a quick snap of the lens.

I do admit there have been occasions where, even though I have the camera at the ready, I was simply too dumbfounded to react until after the fact. I hate when that happens. Yesterday was a different scenario. I actually had the shot, but the Good Samaritan in me prevented me from taking the photo, and instead I rolled down the window (okay, I pushed the button and the window lowered), and got the attention of the driver in the vehicle next to me at the stoplight.

You have all seen, or may have experienced it yourself, what happens when a person sets their coffee cup on top of the car so they can unlock the door. Remarkably, they usually make it at least a ¼ mile before the laws of physics or gravity or Kharma take over, and the cup and the contents fly off the roof into traffic. When this happens, the driver usually says to themselves, “What was that?” then continues to try to remember what is missing from the morning commute.

So I’m at the intersection of Callaghan and Culebra stopped at the light when I notice this old beater of a car. The car itself was worthy of a picture as it seemed to have a patchwork of different shades of blue body parts. Some lighter, more faded, others a darker shade, quite possibly taken from a different vehicle or maybe just spray painted more recently than the rest of the car. But the Partridge Family bus-like paint scheme isn’t what caught my eye. It was the parrot-nose hedge clippers and the box saw, sitting on top of the roof above the rear driver’s side window. No telling how many other tools had started on the roof before the guy began his drive.

I looked up to see that my turning lane signal was still red, reached for my camera and then it occurred to me that perhaps this guy was just someone trying to make a few bucks doing some handyman work. Like I said, I got the guy’s attention and told him he left his tools on the roof of the car. We were still at the light so I just assumed that he would put his car in park, step out of the door and grab the items, then continue on his way.

As he thanked me, he looked around several times and just as the turning lane light turned green I realized that he had some sort of bailing wire wrapped around the window frame of the front and rear driver’s side doors. In other words, his only exit was through the passenger side of the car. Poor guy.

With cars behind me, I had to go so I never saw the outcome. Did the guy slowly move to the nearest parking spot to retrieve the tools or did he actually jump out of the passenger’s side of the car? Or did he just continue driving on, waiting for the inevitable thump? Either way, I wish I would have taken the picture of the tools and the look on his face when I alerted him to his predicament.