Considering I’ve barely mentioned Galen (the new boyfriend) on this blog, I am hesitant to tell the following story, lest you all judge him unfairly. So I am going to preface it with this: Galen is fantastic. He is a wonderful, funny, sweet, good looking and intelligent guy, and I’m very lucky to be dating him.

Now, the story.

Galen lives about 3 hours east of Portland. He and a few of our friends participated in the Hood to Coast race a few weeks ago, which started on a Friday. Since the team had to meet in downtown Portland at 6 AM on said Friday, Galen drove over on Thursday evening and stayed with me that night. Our plan for the morning was that he would get up and take my spare car key, drive my car downtown and park it there. Then I would take the bus downtown (a few hours later) and pick up my car before work.

So, Galen’s alarm went off at 5 AM and I slept as he showered and got ready for the race. Before he left, he asked for directions to Safeway and I told him how to get there and which bridge to take to the west side. He took the spare key, I wished him luck, and he left. I went back to sleep.

Then my phone rang. I saw it was Galen and figured he’d gotten lost on his way to the grocery store.

Megan: “Hello?”
Galen: “Disaster.”
(Pause).
M: “Huh?”
G: “Umm… I broke your key.”
M: “What?”
G: “Well… I put your key in the car door and it wouldn’t turn, but you said it sticks sometimes, so I turned it harder… And it broke off.”
M: “You what? Wait, where are you?”
G: “Right outside your apartment. I haven’t gone anywhere. I’m so sorry… I… I’m going to come upstairs now.”

After I hung up, I tried to process everything that had happened. I was still mostly asleep, though, so nothing was making sense. I went to the front door to meet Galen, who had just come inside.

“Umm,” he said, “It gets worse.”
“What?”
“It’s not your car.”

I stared at him, incredulous, as he explained the situation.

The night before, I had pointed at the street and told him where my car was parked. When he got up in the morning and went outside, it was dark. He went to the place I pointed and found a Nissan, so he tried to unlock the driver’s side door. Then the key broke off and he called me to break the bad news. After he hung up and started walking away to meet me back upstairs, he noticed that the car parked behind the one he was standing next to was ALSO a Nissan. And it was mine. He was standing next to a car that was the wrong color and model, and he had just broken my spare key off in the door.

Back up in my apartment, he asked me if I had any pliers. He wanted to try to pull the small bit of the key out of the door. He kept apologizing and I kept telling him it was totally fine, we would get it all worked out. He left with the pliers and I kept trying to wake up. When he came back, I was expecting more bad news, but he had successfully and easily removed the small bit of key from the OTHER Nissan. I offered to drive him downtown, since I was already up and it was close to 6:00. He was still feeling bad when we got in the car, but after about five minutes of driving in silence, he turned to me and said, “I just broke your spare car key off in SOMEONE ELSE’S car door.” And we both giggled uncontrollably until we got downtown and he got out of the car.