The Daily News

1   Happy Monday.

2   What an odd weekend. I got home Friday night with a bunch of stuff we brought home from visiting the girls, pulled into my driveway, opened the door, and suddenly heard loud explosions coming from seemingly everywhere. 

3  This happens often in San Jose with firecrackers and cherry bombs, but so far my place in Sac has been pretty quiet. We get the occasional moron in a car racing down the street, but overall, it's a lovely neighborhood, sometimes eerily quiet.

4  Not Friday night. Helene thought it was gunshots, because it was almost a rat-a-tat sound, but booming.

5   There's a school stadium reasonably close to where we live, so I thought it to be perhaps fireworks. 

6  It terrified me, because I didn't know if it was fireworks, or if it was an exchange of bullets. 

7  I reached into the car and grabbed everything I could and then flew into the house. It occurred to me that I had left the garage door open, further enhancing the fear. This went on for around three or four minutes, and then just as strangely, it fell silent once more. 

8   We should have called the police but I assumed someone else already had. When I felt safe, I jumped into the garage and pushed the button to close the door. It hit the ground with a loud clunk, louder than I had remembered. Then dark silence.

9   Frightening. I thought the sky was falling. 

10  I did go on the Sacramento police website to see if anyone had reported anything, but the website showed nothing significant, not in our immediate area. 

11  Whew. Turned out to be nothing, I imagine. You don't want to get up in years and feel that. My heart still skips even now just thinking about it. 

12  Yeesh.

13  Moving On, Part One: we tried giving Josh and Caitlin some time to themselves on Saturday, just because I thought they could use some quiet time. Went for a ride through town, but got pretty hungry around dinner time. I vaguely remembered a place nearby that had wonderful oven-baked turkey.

14  I gambled on our neighborhood Dickies BBQ, a place where I'd been just once before. 

15  I get superstitious in parking lots. I park in the same area of each place I go. It usually lines up with a door or a letter; for example, I usually park down the "R" in Raley's, which is near the shopping carts. I do the same at Home Depot.  If I don't have a routine, I find it difficult to remember where I parked. Memory issues. And I worry that if I change my routine, that I am also changing fate.

16  In addition, I found myself exhausted from lack of sleep, like most people I know these days. 

17  I couldn't remember which of three different places had the best turkey, but anything in this place works, and they get it to you fast.

18  I walked in and the savory smell of the barbecued meats tantalized my senses, lifting me to the ceiling. The guy slicing the various meats asked what I wanted, so I decided on a pound of turkey breast.

19  "Half a pound?" he asked. 

20   "A pound." I answered. 

21   I then looked around at some of the retro pictures that decorated the walls.

22  The line moved quickly and before I knew it I stood in front of the cashier. "A half pound of turkey?" she asked. 

23   "A pound." I answered. She didn't blink, handed me a box, I paid and said thanks.

24  I walked out in front happy to see that I had found parking right in front of the door, opened the car door and hopped in. 

25  I have one of those intelligence keys for my blue Altima, and what you do is put your foot on the brake and push a button. The car starts up most times. It needs to be in park in order to start.

26   <basketball buzzer> The button felt dead. Utterly nothing happened except a notification: "No key," it read. 

27  The windows were all up, and it got hot inside. I tried rolling he window down. Dead. I tried several more times. It kept saying, "No key." 

28  My first thought was that my battery had died. I stared. I didn't want to call home with bad news if I could get it started.

29  I then remembered that you could take the battery mechanism in the key apart, revealing a classic key. I did so, but now I had a menu, a bag with food, a key separated into two parts, and another memory lapse: where do I put the key in order to start the engine?

30   I couldn't remember. I looked under the steering wheel, on the side of the steering wheel, and under the dash. I got angered that this delay was going on, and I was really hungry from the heat coming off the bag. 

31  I then thought outside the box. "Nicole!" I thought. 

32  My daughter Nicole and I both bought almost identical Altimas on the same day a few years ago. They are Avengers colors; hers maroon, mine dark blue. They have nearly everything else the same.

33   I tried calling her, but my finger hit someone else's name in contacts. I instantly shut the phone down. I'm not a good phone guy. It requires taking off sunglasses, putting on reading glasses, and all sorts of other nonsense.

34   So. I had one of those moments where you breathe.

35  I got ready to call her once more, now shaking my head not understanding, wondering if my car was haunted this early October. Weird stuff happens to me all the way to Halloween, every single October. I've reported this a bazillion times. 

36  I then looked up and saw the word, "Maxima."

37  "Holy shit!" I thought. "I'm in someone else's car!"

38   I panicked, moved as fast as I could to get out of the car. Visions of pranksters getting their asses beat up on Facebook flew at me like angry locusts. I looked around the front seat, and it STILL looked like my car: napkins all over the passenger seat, empty water bottles littering the back seat, and all four doors unlocked. My pounding heart told me to get out as fast as possible. 

39  I got out, saw the Altima parked a little further out, and didn't look back. I knew some guy was going to jump me and beat me down. I won't fight; I'm a lover, not a fighter, but in this instance, I looked like a thief who just stole a bag of hot meat.

40  When I reached my own car, I looked around like a bank robber. 

41   All clear. I got into my car, looked at my key and saw that I had left the battery part of the key in the other guy's car!

42  At first I thought, "Just use this one and go to the dealer tomorrow; just get out!" Nope. Couldn't find where the key went into the dash. I then thought, "Go back to the Maxima. Most people are good..."

43  I walked back toward the Maxima, which was screened by a bush. When I emerged I saw a family of five closing the doors. The tail light lit up and the guy began backing out of the parking space. 

44  I told myself to turn on the old charm. I took a huge breath, tilted my newsie hat just so, relaxed my shoulders, and began walking toward them. I didn't want to run at them; they'd probably freak out. I just walked up, smiled, looked at a lady in the back seat, pointed to the driver window and made a roll-down gesture.

45  She was of an age and understood the gesture. The guy opened his window, and I smiled, said a nice good afternoon, and explained shakily what had taken place. They instantly laughed. "So if I know me, I probably put the battery part of the key in the cup holder. I would do something like that..." I said nervously.

46  The guy in the passenger seat took my cue, fished around the cup holder and pulled up the other half of my key. 

47   "Omigod, thank you. I didn't know how to get that done. I just wanted you guys to know I'm not a masher!" We all had a great laugh, good people, and I finally got to the Altima and on home. 

48   End of story.

49   Moving On, Part Two: I wanted to thank all the people who posted Columbus Day protests over the weekend for saving me a lot of work. I worried the entire weekend that if I posted something, it would receive retorts and negative vibes. Everybody wants to pick fights on the Internet these days, and I've been too exhausted to argue about anything. And there are people out there, different sorts, squared up and ready to wrangle about any issue. And if they even think you are wrong, they will curse you to the devil as being a liberal. 

50  You get the, "There are two sides to every issue!" sorts. Uh...with Columbus? It isn't a "liberal" issue (God how people throw that word around!), it's historical. 

51   Columbus was a horrible man. Pure and simple. He murdered, raped, and put into slavery tons of people. How do you reach 2015 and not know that? How do stores have Columbus Day sales? I'll end my rant, but to me, there's one side only to the Columbus stuff. It takes time for people to wake up. 

52   That's it on that one. Friday I posted the difference between invent and discover. The word discover means "to find something that already exists," according to Warriner. Columbus didn't discover America. He didn't discover anything but a land with people living, as Vonnegut once put it, "full and imaginative lives."

53  This is from Breakfast of Champions:

1492.

    "As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them."

54  I couldn't have put it better. 

55  I gottago.

56  No real writing lesson here except that sometimes there is one and only one side to an issue. Knowledge, research, and facts are not close-minded. 

57  Have a GREAT day. 

58  See you again.

59  Peace.

~H~

fin.