Hold on! This story does respect rule 3, hear me out. Been wanting to tell this story for years (as is tradition was not actually today). Saw people wanting old fashion TIFU so figured I'd post it. (late 30's m at time of story)

My gf at the time wakes me up very early in the morning and tells me "The van is gone". I am not awake and tell her there is no way its in the driveway. This isn't as condescending as it sounds. If its parked further down the driveway you cannot see it from any of the houses windows. She has the key in her hand. So I come downstairs we get her a cab and I start to take care of reporting it. I find the non emergency number (which was harder then I expected) and report it, they say they will send an officer. Officer arrives and starts collecting information. He asks me if the van has any identifying marks like a way to tell this 15 year old Mazda MPV from others. I tell him yes:

• one of the front side panels is being held on by duct tape. Only one clip was broken the duct tape just stopped it from opening a gap, catching the wind and ripping off completely.
• The back license plate has a huge washer on one side because the license plate hole had rusted out.
• The bottom of the sliding doors was rusted out.
• There was a large fuzzy multicolored giraffe hanging from the rear view mirror.
• There is a 6 person sticker family on the back window that was there when we bought it and I left because it drive people crazy that it did not match my family and I did not give a damn.

There were a lot more details but those are the basics. As I am rattling these off and he's writing them down you can see the 'why the hell would anyone steal this thing' thoughts forming in his head. We finish up and he tells me chances are they will find it burned out on the edge of town that kids probably stole it for a joy ride and that's normally how they turn up.

I work from home so I went about my day. On my lunch from work I decide to hit the corner store that is a block away for smokes. (2 days smoke free as of today! Well still on patches). As I go to cross the street to the store I notice my van there parked beside the store. I read a health thing a long time ago that talked about parking far to get a bit more exercise. Since then I always park far away in this case around the side of the store. So I drove to the store the day before, came out didn't see car and walked home. I am a programmer and was working on a super time sensitive work project and designing things in my head as I walked as I often do. We didn't notice till semi-permanent roommate went to take it to work the next morning.

I call the police back and they say they need to contact the officer I spoke to earlier in the day. I get put on hold and they come back to tell me that the officer wants to come check it out. I said something along the lines of 'yea right, he just wants to laugh at me for being a moron, well, its well earned, I will wait for him here'. I have never seen a more smug look on a mans face. As I'm telling him the story he's amused as hell but he keeps looking at the van. I realized he wasn't just there to laugh at me, he wanted to see how the van could possibly be drivable. It was not in near as bad shape as it sounds. I like to own my FU's so it was posted to FB and much razzing was had :)

I have done this twice since with a new vehicle, but did not contact the police either time. I have also lost all ability to pick on people for losing things. 'You lost a whole car....twice/thrice!' Can you sense the ADHD in this story? :) Overuse of comma's, bonus thoughts in brackets (I tried to keep those to a minimum...wait...damn)

TL;DR; Drove to store, walked home, reported car stolen, hilarity ensued.

English is my first language and I have no excuse for my horrible grammar and spelling. I can only apologize.