I don't know what it is about me, but I'm always having weird trouble with my car horns. On my last car (2000 VW Beetle) I had an electrical problem that periodically would cause my car alarm to go off after turning the ignition. I lived with it for far too long, and always had a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach every time I would start my car up. It was like Russian Roulette. Sometimes it would go off and other times I'd luck out and it would not. Well, I eventually got that fixed. Then I sold the stupid thing.
I thought my car horn problems were gone for good. Well, it seems there is some kind of weird annoying-car-horn-issues curse on me. It all started last night when I was waiting for my men's Bible study group to start. I was in my car listening to the Yankees/Indians playoff game. I was getting bored so I took out a coin from my pocket and started playing with it. Flipping it in the air, turning it over and over, and unfortunately, got it stuck in my steering wheel. You know, that little crease between the car horn and the wheel? I thought to myself, hmmm, that's not going to be easy to get out...um, it's getting further in...oh crap, it's all the way in now! I was trying to pinch it out with my finger nails, but I'd just clipped them recently and I only succeeded in pushing it all the way into the pad of the horn. I thought, well, let me try to turn the wheel. Maybe it will fall out. It didn't. In fact, it fell even further behind the pad. The horn went off. I jiggled it a bit and it stopped. Crap, I thought. Oh well, it'll come out later.
So I went in to my men's group forgetting all about it. On my drive home I heard someone tap their horn a few times at me. I thought it was someone from my group giving me a "see ya later" honk. I turned my head and saw no one. Then all of a sudden, it got louder and quick, like some sort of crazy speed-honking thing. It didn't take me long to figure out that it was me, and my coin was the source of this spastic honking. And then it just stopped. I knew it was only a matter of time...a bump in the road here, a sharp turn there. It was inevitable. I started having that terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach again as I was nearing some cars that were stopped at a red light. I prayed, I held my breath. It seemed to work OK. But then as I was starting back up, it started doing it again. Cars moved out of my way. I felt horrible, but what can you do when you have a coin stuck in your steering wheel horn? You just keep driving. And that's what I did.
Eventually the coin kind of settled into a good spot and it didn't go off again. So I forgot about it...that is, until the next day when I was turning onto Greendale Road in Morton Grove. Again I prayed, held my breath, and pulled furiously at the horn cover, all to no avail. Most of the way my horn was half tooting at random. People must have thought I was completely insane. So I made it with only a few incidents on 294 and tried to keep as far away from other cars as I could. I'm just thanking God that I wasn't in gridlock where I could imagine some scary truck driver jumping out of their rig to kindly ask me why I'm honking like a rabid goose.
I finally pulled in close to my work and found a nice big empty parking lot where I worked furiously to dislodge my stupid coin, horn tooting at every attempt. All to no avail. I knew I was in for a rough day.
Eventually I mustered my courage and started asking people around the office if they happened to have a screwdriver on them. It was embarrassing explaining why I needed it. I told my story about 5 different times. You can imagine how much laughter that brought on.
My co-worker Heidi asked her husband to bring me some screwdrivers from home, and with their help, I managed to pull that stupid coin out. So if you are ever playing with a quarter, or heaven forbid, a silver dollar, for the LOVE OF GOD do not put it anywhere near your steering wheel. This is a public service announcement.
