Atle's car

Four years ago I sold an old Volvo 340 to my good friend Atle for 5000 nok. The car was pretty beaten up but ran fine and Atle was a student so he was happy to have transport.

A couple of months after I sold him the car I was cleaning out my desk and I found the spare key. My initial thought was to pass it on to him, but then I had a better plan...

For the next 2 years, I carried the key on my key-ring and when ever I saw his car parked I would move it. I started out by just turning it around, then moving it one or two spaces in the garage or street, then ultimately moving it to the other end of the garage and even to a different street.

We can never be sure when he figured that something was going on. Everyone else knew, so when he got drunk he would surreptitiously ask if the security guard moved anyone’s car in the garage and we would all look surprised and say no. He came to my office one time and said his car had been stolen, I said that I had seen it in the street and he went away convinced that he must have parked it out there and forgotten. Latterly, he constructed various elaborate mechanisms for the security guards to move his car from the garage (where he parked illegally) with a pallet loader, trolley jack and tow truck. At one stage he called the security and asked them to stop moving his car.

We kept this up for about two years until he finally sold the car. For a further two years we kept him in the dark, although all his friends knew, his wife knew, even people who had never met him knew. That was until today!

We were having a slow 5 minutes in an otherwise chaotic day in the office and we told him - here is the reply, which came by e-mail ten minutes later...

"I have to applaud your where’s-atles-car game which as a practical joke is ingenious. I hope that my revenge will be of similar quality and creativity. I am not surprised by your cunningness.
In fact my only surprises are:
John, the biggest gossip database the universe managed to shut up about it for 3 years
Roy, the smuggest motherfucker in space managed not to be smug about it for 3 years
Not surprisingly on the other hand: T-bone, the cooooolest dude on planet earth kept a cool face for three years.
Cunts, I salute you!"

Bomber

So I guess we can say that was a result then.