Years ago when I was relatively young as well as reasonably and appropriately stupid, I became involved in what could arguably be called a criminal act. I did say arguably. I was simply doing a favour for some friends per se. Of course that’s what they all say. However that would never have stood up in court. A group of five or six of my friends had parked their car in a downtown parkade. I had taken a cab to join them. We were all headed to a pub. What else is new when one is male, young and care free? Upon leaving the pub the entire group of us headed to the car to drive to another pub. Perhaps we thought the beer would be better there. None of us had had much beer to that point in time so driving to another pub was not a particularly crazy thing to do. Likely we had had one drink each.
We piled into the car, only to discover it would not start due it turned out, to a totally flat battery. Why did the car industry get rid of hand cranks? Anybody know? I was well practiced in the art courtesy of my first albeit very aged British car. Need I say more?
The owner of the recalcitrant car had the idea of borrowing a battery from one of the other cars parked in the parkade and to use it to start his vehicle. Once started he would then quickly reconnect his dead battery and return the other. (In those long ago days it was easy without tools to unlatch, lift and access stuff under the hood. No worries.) This because the hood on most of the then generation of cars could be lifted externally without a prior triggering from the interior. I found that even then rather hard to believe but lift it entirely externally one of our party did.
To avoid the possibility of being caught ‘red handed’ so to speak albeit borrowing, absolutely not stealing, a battery as in ‘that’s what they all say’, lookouts were positioned in both directions away from the recalcitrant electrically powerless car. Not wishing to risk my fingerprints appearing on the ‘battery loan’ targeted car, I quickly volunteered to be one of two lookouts needed. If a moving car appeared some distance from our vehicle either from lower in the parkade or from higher up, the designated lookout would yell and shout as loudly as possible. (Yes, long pre cell phone!) As a trained vocalist, a tenor as it happens, that was right up my alley and I would be unlikely to be caught short of utter stupidity – always possible of course.
We organized a lookout directive. As soon as I or the other lookout saw a vehicle approaching from above or below our respective locations, we would signal by frantic hand waving and noise making in order to trigger our ‘crew’ to scatter pronto. After a subsequent ‘all clear’, they would continue removing or, later after the fact replacing, the target car’s battery.
Did all this fiddling around ultimately work? That is did we start ‘our’ car with the borrowed battery and then quickly replaced it whist at the same time reconnecting the original battery. No it did not. The car would not start with the ’stolen’/borrowed battery. We went back to the pub and later called a tow truck! So much for bright ideas.
Had we been caught red handed during the frigging around would we have been charged with theft? My bet is that we would have been. ‘But we were only borrowing the battery’. I can hear the conversation now. That’s what they all say sir. Guilty as charged. Case closed.