Tow for Two
I got together with a friend I hadn’t seen in a few weeks for dinner last night and in order to be mindful of both our wallets and waistlines, I brought a nuke-it meal to her place which is within walking distance of mine. I decided to drive there last night because it was too dark and too cold to think of doing anything else but also because typically when we get together, it’s at my place.
I parked my car in the underground garage of her building in a place clearly marked ‘visitor’ and spent the next two hours catching up, touching base and forging those bonds of friendship that keep me rooted in the DC area when I think most about leaving.
Around 9pm I went down to my car and it was…gone.
Anyone whose ever had the experience of going to where you remember parking your car and finding it not there, you know you go through this process in your head.
Wait. Did I park somewhere else?
Did someone steal my car?
Did I park on a different parking deck?
And I’m hitting the panic button on my key fob to see if I can trip the alarm and that’s when I see the sign, about the size of a mouse-pad posted no-where near the place where I’d parked my car that says that if I don’t have a visitors pass, blah, blah, blah.
Tow Truck companies are the the ambulance chasing attorneys of the automotive world. Not the Tows Trucks that are scooping up broken cars after an accident or because your car crapped out on the highway. I’m talking about Cletus, the tobaco-sucking moron with the 4th grade education who waited for me to leave the car and swooped in while the hood was still warm and took it to rest alongside a 1973 Pinto in some god-forsaken part of the city that I would never intentionally visit.
Determined not to let it ruin what was otherwise a lovely night, my friend and I drove to a part of Alexandria that I’ll kindly refer to as industrial where I gave Cletus more money than he makes in a week to press a single button that opened the gate where my car sat looking at me with dusty head-lights. If my VW Eos could talk, it would have said: Nice one, dumbass.
Fetuccini Alfredo Lean Cuisine? $4.00
Cost to spring my car from the pokey? $150.00
Time with a good friend? Priceless
If it hadn’t cost you so much money, this would be funny. No, wait — it IS funny in a perverted way! I’ve had this happen to me, and, as angry as I was about it, I knew underneath that I had no one to blame but myself. Ugh.
Bummer. That happened to me recently in Madrid, while visiting with my family. No tow, but a hefty 90 Euro (125 bucks) parking fine.
I have a theory that Tow-Truck drivers end up in the 7th level of purgatory.
TEST!!!