The joke that wasn't

This afternoon we arrived at the in-laws to drop the kids off for the afternoon. A few blocks from their house I'd called to let them know we were almost there, and we would have been, too, if it wasn't for those meddling kids. I mean, the congested traffic on account of some parade. So it took us several minutes longer than usual to drive the couple of blocks. At the in-laws we parked in their garage next to the FIL's car, got the kids out, and were about to head up the stairs to their house when our car horn started beeping.

Liz and I looked at each other then she looked at her keyring, thinking maybe she'd pressed the panic button. The horn stopped, then beeped again and we were like WTF??? Then it stopped again. We were halfway up the stairs when the horn gave a couple more beeps, and I was thinking something was wrong with our car. We entered the in-laws house and called out to the FIL (we'd parked in the MILs spot so we knew she wasn't home). The FIL called out but his voice sounded a little distant. We figured he was upstairs so JE went to the bottom of the stairs and called out to him...then the FILs voice came from behind us.

He'd reclined the seat in his car and had been lying down in it, thinking to surprise us or scare us, and it hadn't been our car at all but his that had been tooting. I think we'd taken so long to arrive that he'd fallen asleep. Their downstairs garage is fairly dark so we hadn't seen him lying in the car when we'd parked next to him, and he hadn't woken up until we'd started to head upstairs, probably woken up by the kids voices. He'd tooted his horn like he'd planned, but it was a little too late to have the desired effect. In a way he had scared us, but only because I was afraid something had gone wrong with our brand new car :P