The same way that other dads collected exotic beer cans or signed baseballs, my dad collected acts of foolishness. If anyone in the family did anything silly or stupid, no matter how trivial it might have seemed at the time, my father would take note of it. He’d quietly cobble together the particulars into an anecdote, then find a place for said anecdote in his repertoire of “Foolish Anecdotes Starring My Family.” Identifying foolishness and crafting it into stories was one of my father’s greatest talents, second only to his preternatural gifts for building homemade Lazy Susans and somehow always knowing when The Lawrence Welk Show was airing next.

These anecdotes were designed to be shared with other people. He’d spring them on unsuspecting waiters, barbers, cashiers, and aunts and uncles, and he’d intentionally do so always in our presence. “You wouldn’t believe what this one did yesterday,” he’d say, pointing out one of us before launching into his story. These anecdotes were designed to embarrass us—and that included our mother—into never doing anything stupid again. Dad’s audience—those barbers and waiters—could be counted on to chuckle uncomfortably, then either change the subject or sidle away. But before they could get away, Dad would always end his stories with the same gesture: he’d shrug his shoulders in a theatrical way, hands above his head, as if to say, Can you believe it’s my lot in life to be cast in with this bunch?

True story: when I was in the fourth grade my father asked me to check the oil on the family car. He was forever checking the oil on the family car. He checked it in the morning and he checked it again at night. There was nothing more important in the entire world than the oil level in the car. Should the car ever run out of oil, as he had informed us many times—which could only happen if we did not gauge the oil level with vigilance—the world, as we knew it, would come to an end. The car’s engine would seize up—and he would ball up one of his fists to demonstrate this great engine-seizing, world-ending moment, then shake the fist in our faces—and the engine would be rendered as useless, to use another of his preferred expressions, as tits on a bull.

The oil-gauging dipstick was located in the front of the car, underneath the hood. I knew this. Yet on that particular Sunday afternoon, for some inexplicable and possibly self-destructive reason that will haunt me until the end of my days, I made the mistake of opening the car’s trunk to search for the dipstick, and in doing so, I doomed myself to top-billing in a chestnut that my father would recount for decades to come.

As I stood on the quiet Chicago side street hoping that Terry—the stranger who I’d willingly handed over the keys to my car to and watched drive away in a self-guided test drive—would come back, what I thought about was this: If Terry did not return, if Terry turned out to be the type of person who was capable of taking another man’s car, my father would have his magnum opus. This story—about the one time in Chicago when I let a stranger drive off in my car—would be his Citizen Kane. Dad could retire on this one.

I listened for the familiar high whine of the Subaru’s Japanese-made engine and did my best to defend the parking space. Cars continually pulled up then attempted to reverse into the space where the Subaru had been parked—my space. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I’d say, waving my arms wildly. “This spot is taken! It’s taken!” Drivers would stop and glare at me through their back windows, trying to figure out if the spot was worth the trouble of confronting me or not. Then they’d face forward, put their cars into gear, then squawk their tires as they sped off.

A few minutes later, a yellow Toyota buzzed up like an angry bee and began reversing into the spot at an aggressive rate of speed. I thumped the car’s trunk and gave the driver a few “Whoas.” He rolled down his window and poked out his head. He was a fat man with mirrored aviators squeezed around his head. “What do you mean ‘not available’? It looks available to me,” he said.

I told him that he’d better keep driving. He glared at me. I glared back at him. After a tense moment, all the air seemed to go out of him. He faced forward and shouted into the windshield. “If one more fucking thing goes wrong today, just one more thing, I swear I will fucking lose it!” he screamed. “I don’t need this shit!” He pounded the dash a few times. He drove off.

I realized that I needed something that would clearly indicate to passing drivers that the spot was blocked off, something official-looking, like traffic cones. I spotted a trash can nearby and figured that might do the trick. I hustled over to grab it, and as I was returning to the spot, another car—a Crown Victoria that was the color of a black olive—was backing into it. I gave the car my usual “whoas” and a thump, then set the trash can directly in the path of the reversing car. The brake lights came on.

The driver did something that none of the previous drivers had done: he put the car into park, opened his door, and got out. He was tall—a head taller than I was. He wore a leather jacket that hung to his knees. “What kind of shit are you trying to pull here?” he asked.

At that moment the passenger side door opened. A second man got out. He was taller than the first man. “Get out the way, man,” he said. “Get out of the way before you get hurt.”

I felt sick and small and a long way from home. I grabbed the trash can’s handles and hustled it up onto the curb. The driver got back into the car and finished wedging the car into the spot while the other man stood on the curb with his hands on his hips, staring at me. Once the driver was satisfied, he shut off the car and got out. The men were surprisingly calm. They were not afraid of me. They stood there, and looked at me like they wanted to extract something more from me.

I told them that this was my spot, that they couldn’t go around taking spots from people like that. I tried to act tough, but these were the type of men who would get into fights over nothing, and they’d be happy to do so.

“What are you going to do about it?” the passenger asked. “Are you feeling strong this morning?” They asked me if I’d had my Wheaties that morning.

The spot was gone. The Subaru was gone, too. I didn’t need a beating on top of everything else. When it was obvious that I didn’t have anymore lip in me, the men turned and walked off.

Goddamned assholes.

At that moment I heard the familiar whine of the Subaru’s engine coming up the block. Like a mirage, there was Terry sitting behind the wheel, along with his well-trimmed beard and his tiny gold earring. He turned down the window.

“What happened to the spot?” he asked.

“I couldn’t hold it,” I said.

“I figured you might not be able to,” he said.

“It was a bad plan,” I said.

“Better or worse plan than letting a total stranger drive off in your car?”

He told me that he liked the Subaru a lot and that he wanted to buy it. He asked me if I’d take a thousand dollars for it. I told him that we had a deal. It was the first significant deal I’d made in my life. My confidence was starting to return. Terry double parked and put on the Subaru’s hazard lights. I signed the title over to him on my kitchen counter. He counted out the thousand for me. When we walked back downstairs, we found a parking ticket on the Subaru’s windshield. Since the car was still technically in my name until the DMV processed the paperwork, the ticket was my responsibility. But Terry, nice guy that he was, offered to pay for it. He took out his wallet again, and pulled out $75, and handed it over to me. When he opened his wallet, I could plainly see that he’d brought much more than the thousand he’d paid for the car. I cursed myself for not haggling with him, for not squeezing him for more. He had obviously anticipated some haggling.

Terry honked once as he sped away. I stood and watched him go, waving and then feeling stupid for waving. The Subaru was gone, and when it left, I felt a great weight lift from my shoulders. I hadn’t realized how much worry and concern I was devoting to that car. Now it was someone else’s problem. I also had a cool thousand dollars in my pocket, which, if I was very frugal, meant I’d be able to stay in Chicago for at least two more months. But best of all, the waiters, barbers, cashiers, and aunts and uncles in my father’s life would be spared from having to endure a new story from my father.