We will be garnishing one little girl's wages

Several weeks ago, our Honda Odyssey started exhibiting some strange behavior. We would be driving along and out of the blue, the speakers would start blaring static. Even if our radio wasn't turned on. If pushed different buttons or controls it would change the pitch of the static and then eventually the static would usually stop.

This would happen off and on and we hard time discovering any pattern to it. We hesitated to take it to a shop, because it was so inconsistent and we did know if we could reproduce while at the mechanics. Then last Sunday our parking lights came on by themselves and would not turn off. I had to disconnect the battery so that it would not drain overnight. Monday morning I took the van to a Honda dealer. By the time I got to the dealer, the parking lights had shut themselves off. I explained to the mechanic the weird electrical problems we had been having and he said they would try to track it down and that it was probably a short or ground somewhere in the system.

I called the mechanic several times throughout the day to see if they had found anything and they kept telling me the were still trying to track it down. Finally around 3:00 they called me. They said the problem was due to "an excess of change in the radio". That's right there was about 75 cents worth of change that had been stuck into the radio. Apparently inside the radio there are open wires and the radio itself is connected directly to one of the van's main computers. The change moving around would cause random shorts and grounds causing the strange behavior that we have seen.

So had to 75 cents get into the radio. Well, what we do know is that Connie caught Gracie trying to stick a quarter through the CD slot a few weeks ago. So best guess it that Grace had already stuck a few in by the time Connie caught her. The total bill to fix the van came to $270. So we will be garnishing Grace's wages for a little while.