subaru problem

so our neighbor rapped on our door this evening to tell us that the exterior lights were still on on our automobile. i graciously thanked her for the warning and a. begins to tell me that she thought she noticed this earlier in the day as well, but after checking it out it appeared to be sunlight transmuting the tail lights. alas, as dusk rolled in, the sunlight was no longer the culprit.

i monkeyed around with the lights in a deductive series of flipping on and off buttons, yet to no avail. odd thing was that only the parking lights were lit, and not the headlamps.

this is obviously an electrical issue, so i went inside and grabbed a manual and wrench. i pulled the positive cable off the battery, thinking that what ever had triggered the parking lights to stay on could be reset due to losing the electric charge. no dice.

i then started muttling through the fuses, as perhaps a fuse could have blown leading to a malfunction in the electrical system. again, no dice.

we had tickets to a movie and were short on time, so i disconnected the battery cable again to preserve the life. the walk to the theatre plagued me with troubled thoughts of frustrated curiosity and a sketched game plan of how to remedy this issue.

once returning home tonight, i decided to run a quick google search or two and see what turned up for the query "subaru parking lights staying on." i proceeded to load the first 5 hits in tabs and curse through them, which all said the same thing...there is a parking light switch on the steering column that was, in most likelihood, mistakenly hit and the cause of the unwanted illumination.

humiliated by user error, but overjoyed by the reconnection of the battery cable and flick of a switch to finally solve the problem. thank you, internet, for your infinite wisdom.