Someone borrowed my car one night from an apartment complex.

I used to own a 90s model Acura way back when. I went downstairs to get a pack of butts from the car, and found it was gone. So i called the police, filed a stolen car report. Called a friend, went looking for it to see if someone had ditched it nearby. Didnt find it, so i went to bed. Woke up the next morning, called a ride for work, and when i went outside to fet in my ride’s car, my fucking car was back, in its oarking spot. No damage to ignition cylinder or door lock cylinders.

Several butts in the ashtray (back when cars came with ashtrays and cigarette lighters) that werent my brand, the seat was scooted into a different spot, all the mirrors adjusted for a taller driver. I called the police, they came, took some fingerprints, found a pocket knife that was not mine, and said that since it was returned i had likely loaned it to a friend and just didn’t remember or was being dishonest. That was that. I spent months afterwards waking up in the middle of the night, looking to see if my car was still there. This was just before 2000, and i never think of it now, but for years i wondered who in my complex had borrowed it, and whether they were watching and laughing as i puzzled over it.

Only tangentially related but I often find myself thinking of life like a branching tree with every decision point being a new node. Things that in retrospect seem obvious are unclear in the moment. It’s always an interesting and somewhat melancholy thought experiment to think about where I might be had things tipped slightly differently, even if I am happy where i am now

In high school I took this sort of school-led community service trip to another country. Things got sorta raunchy on the last day, my friend ended up hooking up with these two girls in the grade above us.

We got back to the usa, had like one day of rest then back to school. On that day back to school I got a text from a number not in my contacts, like first thing in the morning as I was walking to school, reading “hey did [friend] hook up with [girl] and [girl] in [country]?” I kept asking who it was texting me, and they kept saying shit like “your worst nightmare” or “nobody.” I have a couple of possibilities of who it might’ve been, but they never told me their name. Sometimes that pops into my head and I wonder who it was.