Our third car, Jean Claude Grand Am, is in pretty good shape for a vehicle with 170,000 miles on it. I’ve taken pretty good care of it over the years. It draws light duty now, such as trips to the corner to get gasoline for the mowers, running to town for a grocery item, or like this week, taking the place of another car. Abby’s Jeep is in the shop for a new water pump and a few other odds and ends, so she is driving Jean Claude.

When Abby drove the Grand Am, something mysterious happened: sometimes the key would stick in the ignition. Weirdly, it never happened to me. We couldn’t figure it out, until tonight. When Abby got home tonight, she told me the key had stuck in the ignition, but she finally figured out what was making the key stick. When Abby drives it, she moves the seat forward, and recently I changed the position of the police scanner from the middle of the console to the left side, so she could use the cup holders. As a result, the seat pushed on the scanner, which pushed on the console, which moved the safety lock on the ignition key enough that it wouldn’t release.

So Jean Claude is healthy after all.