I was in Delosa last week for the Thanksgiving holidays visiting family. Instead of flying I chose to drive because we’re going to get my car thoroughly inspected and decide whether or not I should keep it or will drive back in my parents car. That’s a separate story, though. It also helped because we spent part of the week in Colosse visiting my family and the other part in Beyreuth across the state visiting Clancy’s.

The inside of my car was messy as it so often is and I needed to clean it out because it’s more difficult for people that handle your car to take things from your car if anything missing would be conspicuous. I made the mistake of telling my father that I was going to clean out my car. I knew it was a mistake the minute I said, because I knew that he would say “I’ll help!”

Ordinarily such assistence would be graciously accepted. The problem is that my father believes that I have quit smoking and the pack of cigarettes I had on the drive had disappeared from my pocket, meaning that they were somewhere in my car. I desperately wanted to avoid a conversation on the matter. Cleaning out my car was one of the ways I was hoping to do that because in addition to cleaning it for the inspectors, I wanted to clean it for my father because I knew that if I didn’t, he would. But the second I said that I would clean it and he offered to help, I had inadvertently made the conversation more rather than less likely.

I told him not to worry about it and that I would take care of it. He said it was no worry at all. Then I said that I didn’t want to do it right away so I would do it later. He said that he wouldn’t mind at all getting started while I decompressed from the drive. I told him that I was a bit embarassed by the state of my car and wanted to take care of it myself and that seemed to be the magic rationale. The magic quickly faded. I wasn’t out there five minutes before he was saying that he was going to help me. I told him that he should go to bed since it was past his bedtime, but he was insistant.

I wasn’t really sure what to do. I couldn’t insist any more loudly than I already had without incurring real suspicion. Further, he was sitting in the driver’s seat near which the cigarette pack was most likely to be found. I quickly cleaned out the passenger’s side and then as inconspicuously as I could I moved on to the back seat behind him, hoping that the cigarette pack was underneath the seat. Thankfully, it was. Not wanting to put it in my pocket, I stuck it in the trash bag figuring that I could get it out later.

When we finished, Dad volunteered to take care of the garbage sack for me. Not wanting him to look inside to make sure that I didn’t throw away anything I shouldn’t have and seeing the cigarettes, I told him that I would take care of it. He insisted, I insisted. I then said that I needed to clean out the trunk of my car and I would put the garbage sack in the trash can myself when I finished. He offered to help with the trunk. He insisted, I insisted. He won and he helped me with the trunk. I figured at least the extra junk from the trunk would make it harder for him to find the cigarette pack and that I would do whatever I could to make sure that the garbage bag did not leave my hands.

As we finished, he said that I should leave the trash bag out because he wanted to look through it and make sure that I hadn’t thrown away anything that I shouldn’t. Before I could say anything, he said that he would take a look in the morning because he was getting tired. Thanks to the extra junk from the trunk meant to hinder Dad’s search through the trash bag, it took me more than half an hour to find the pack.

The next morning he said that he was going to take a look in the trash bag and seemed surprised when I didn’t object.