Leaving your phone in a gas station bathroom is one thing. Leaving your wife? That takes a special kind of road trip brain fog.
According to France 3, a 62-year-old man from Paris managed to do exactly that while driving to Morocco with his family. After stopping at a highway service station near Orléans around 4:30 a.m., he got back in the car and drove off, completely unaware that his wife wasn’t with him. His 22-year-old daughter was asleep in the front seat. No one noticed.
He finally figured it out four hours and 300 kilometers (186 miles) later. By then, he had no idea which gas station it had been.
“We received this rather confusing call around 8:30 a.m.,” police from the Landes region told the outlet. “The man no longer knew where he had stopped, or when.” He guessed somewhere near Orléans. That didn’t help much.
Police began searching rest stops, reviewing toll booth footage, and trying to piece together a timeline. The daughter, still half-asleep, couldn’t offer much beyond “I didn’t notice.” The more the man spoke, the weirder things sounded. “There were a lot of inconsistencies,” police said. “We saw that the girl was sitting in the front, even though that wasn’t really what they were telling us.”
Man Forgets Wife at Gas Station, Finally Realizes Mistake 300 KM Later
At some point, investigators started wondering if this really was a mistake—or if the man had purposely left his wife behind.
Turns out, he hadn’t. Authorities eventually tracked her phone to a service station in Deux-Sèvres, where she’d been sitting for hours. She had already called local police to say her husband had forgotten her and hadn’t moved since 4:30 a.m.
The man was ordered to turn around and pick her up. After a quick investigation, police ruled out anything sinister. He really had just driven off without her.
The family was reunited and allowed to continue their trip to Morocco. No word on how that car ride went, but odds are it was a little quieter than before—and probably included some questioning of their relationship. On her end.
It’s easy to forget your sunglasses. Forgetting your wife is next level.
The post Man Forgets Wife at Gas Station, Drives 300 Kilometers Before Noticing appeared first on VICE.
