Immobilized

“Your vehicle is fitted with an anti-theft engine immobilizer system,” reads the small white card tucked inside the folder containing my car manual. “This will prevent your vehicle being driven without a key.”

Unfortunately, as I learned last Friday, it will not stop someone from breaking your car window and roughly ripping the ignition apart with a screwdriver, as they attempt to immobilize your immobilizer. Without success. Sucks to be you, bro. And now, sucks to be me.  

It was a bitter end to another sweet, sunny Wairarapa day. Being in the retail business, our boss had sensibly decided that organising a staff Christmas party amid the December rush would be as easy as trying to stop the idiomatic brewery workers from organising a piss-up. “We’ll do something in January,” she promised.

And now it was January, and we had spent several hours at a newly refurbished winery on the outskirts of Masterton (the winery call it their “cellar door”, but it’s really more of a cellar palace). We had sipped delectable wine from elegant glasses, nibbled delicious morsels from mouth-watering platters, and stuffed our greedy gobs with the out-of-this-world baked brie. The honey dripped down our chins and stuck to our midlife hairs like glue, as we tipped our heads back and opened our mouths like digger jaws to make sure the dripping cheese reached our taste buds rather than our t-shirts. Crikey, that brie was good.

The winery is a snappy 12-minute drive from home, and I considered going straight there. “I don’t have to drink,” I told myself. But it was Friday, and we were going to a winery to party, and of course I would want to have a drink. So I drove into work, parked my car in a nearby street, and hitched a lift with a sober workmate.

A nearby street? Yes, technically it is a street, but in reality you might call it an alley (Not dark! Not dark!). Running behind the local museum, the alley has some free parks that don’t belong to anyone, but are frequently used by those of us who work nearby. And that’s where my car was.

So after having a jolly good time at the winery, I returned to my car to find the window on the driver’s door smashed, the ignition mangled, and a screwdriver left behind on the floor.

In the “victim of car crime” stakes, I’ve mostly escaped unscathed. I’ve only had my car stolen once, and that was 32 years ago. I was 23 years old, and it was my first ever car, and I was angry and devastated beyond all compare (thankfully the police found my car in a nearby suburb a week later).

This time, though, I just sighed. With age comes resignation; the knowledge that bad things will happen to you sometimes and getting angry about it doesn’t help. I rang Barnard and then the police, who took all of the details and told me my report would be filed (AKA: “We’re not going to lift a finger on this one”) because they didn’t have any leads.

Really that was all my fault, and rest assured, dear reader, next time I will do better. When the nice lady from the police asks, “Do you know of anyone who might do this?” instead of replying, “No, not at all,” I will say, “Yes. Yes, I do. A strange man in black clothing has been following me around and muttering something about screwdrivers and immobilizers and Toyota Yarises. I think it might be him.” And then a police officer will come and fingerprint the screwdriver and the smudge marks they left behind, and perhaps they’ll have some chance of catching whoever did it.

And when the nice lady from the police asks, “Would you like someone from Victim Support to get in touch with you?” instead of saying, “No, thank you,” I will say, “To be honest, I’d prefer it if my tax dollars were spent preventing and solving crime rather than offering me support after the fact.” I’m sure Victim Support provide amazing help for people who really need them. But still.

I haven’t mentioned the $500 excess I’ll have to pay my insurance company, or the inconvenience of not having my car for a yet-to-be-specified time while it’s repaired. Those are trivial matters really.   

And that’s because, what I really want to say is: When bad things happen to you, all sorts of good people appear, like fairy dust being sprinkled from heaven.

One of them was the workmate who texted me the next day to say how sorry she was about my car and she hoped I was OK.

Then there was the lady from my insurance company who was friendly and compassionate, and efficiently organised my claim and a tow for my car to the repairers.

There was the cheerful local mechanic who drove past while Barnard and I were standing by my car, and told us one of his guys (we’ll call him Jacob) had seen three kids acting suspiciously near my car, but when they saw him they left. Jacob, who was thin and young, stood three feet from the reception counter, and leaned over it like a lone tree blown sideways by the wind. He told me he had seen the same three kids trying to steal a car from the Toyota yard down the road earlier that day, and another time he saw them wearing handcuffs and “slammed over the bonnet” of a police car. As the story grew, I started to doubt the veracity of his statements, but when I glanced at the cool-faced receptionist there was no sign of eye-rolling or “Here he goes again.” So thanks to Jacob, the three fine, upstanding members of our community who took such an interest in my car were unable to enjoy the free joyride they undoubtedly desired.

And then there was Anna. When Barnard noticed the security camera outside the museum, he went inside and met Anna. Anna was livid when she heard what happened to my car. (“It’s happened before and we got them on camera.”) She was even more livid that the boys and girls in blue were sitting on their hands. (“I’ve got a contact in the police. I’ll have a word to him.”) She promised to check the security camera footage and to email me whatever footage she found of the buggers breaking into my car. She hasn’t done so yet, but she left a message on my phone to say she’s working on it. Thank you, Anna. I appreciate it.

That was eight days ago, and I’m still waiting to hear when my car will be fixed. Meanwhile, it’s the weekend, and another stunning Wairarapa day has dawned. I’m driving to Featherston soon to meet a friend for lunch. She’s positive and energetic and we always have a great time together. She’s definitely one of the good ones and I like to think that mostly, the good ones still win.

So I hope my caring workmate, and the nice insurance lady, and the cheerful mechanic, and Jacob and Anna, and the boys and girls in blue (yes, even them) have a lovely weekend enjoying this beautiful weather. And I hope the fine, upstanding members of our community who tried to steal my car are out in the sunshine too. Mostly, I hope they get sunburned. I hope they burn to all hell.