McDonald's and Darwin

Geez, blog writing is a bitch. Now I am getting dinged because I don't post pictures and my prose is too dense. Sigh.

So this is for Christine...













So it is 2003 and I've been out of work for a VERY long time and quite broke and unhappy. I have a few dollars cash that is all I have that is not tied up some which way and I decide go to McDonald's to buy the cheapest hamburger for lunch I can.

I am standing in line and miserable and whilst in line I become aware of these noxious yard monsters and their intensely awful house frau mother. What draws my attention is the puling of all three...

"Mommy, I want..." in a hellish chorus from the midget snot machines and a nasal whine from ol' ma as she confronts our order taker.

"Well I need a minute to decide..."

WTF?

"What have you been doing the last ten minutes of this grueling exercise of people herding?", I think to myself. But before I can answer the voice in my head, Hagatha starts in on the poor cashier.

"You know the shakes are a rip off? If you buy a large shake, the price per ounce is less than a small shake. What if I want a small shake? The price should be the same." Not content with our cashier's weak "if you insist" smile, Haggy presses her point.

"Don't you think?" A high pitched nasal assault that certainly has the local dog's ears bleeding.

"It's a total rip off. I can't believe it. I think that your company thinks we are all stupid. Don't you agree?"

Having stood in this line for at least ten minutes and being hungry and tired and broke, I step forward.

"Pardon me, but if you think you are being ripped off, perhaps you should order something else?" I say somewhat evenly despite my desire to bludgeon her with a "Happy Meal".

She turns slowly to me and sizes me up.

"Well, EXCUSE me, but if I want your opinion, I'll ask for it."

Shazam! She told me. My god, the internal bleeding!

"Well, EXCUSE me," I acidly replied, "if I was to give you my opinion. I would have to say, judging from you and your spawn, Charles Darwin was wrong."

She was taken off kilter, noticeably shocked by my obnoxious, but clearly educated insult. She then huffed, puffed and dragged her awful, loud and whiny children out of line. As I watched, I noticed the rest of the line did not disapprove.

I stepped up to place my measly burger order. The cashier looked at me smiling and she kind of mouthed the words "it's on the house."

I ate like a king that lunch. Or at lease like Mayor McCheese.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

A truly worthy blog for Joel.

So this is the twentieth anniversary of one of the best cautionary tales I have. Sometimes in the retelling, I break it into smaller portions, but for you, I give you the entirety. Some I remember, some of it I was told (you'll see why in a bit).

Setting The Stage

It is 1989 and I am 23 years old. I have been working as a computer lab assistant for a few years at Seattle Central Community College and have been a teacher's assistant for a woman who would be my friend for many years after, Pam.

Pam taught a desktop publishing course for the graphic designers and I was her flunky. I thought it was a grand way to meet hot graphic designers and I had a lot of fun. But there was this one weekend where things got a bit out of control.

Now those who know me today probably don't imagine me as a young, slender man, but I was. At 23, I would be in the best shape I ever was in, clocking in at a whopping 155 and wearing my 30x30 jeans. However, I was a bit of a lightweight in the drinking department (a skill I grew into as I grew). So this one weekend in May, there was a college function where my division was celebrating something or other. This was a Friday night and Saturday morning, Pam and I were giving a presentation in Tacoma to local printers and design houses on using our students as apprentices.

The College Event

So Friday night we are at this function, Pam, myself and this little Japanese woman named Jeanette.

There was boxed wine.

I had not eaten.

I awoke at 5:30am Saturday morning in my clothes at my mother's house.

This is what I am told happened. I even still have the scars, so I am sure it went down as I am told.

So apparently I had more than one glass of wine (I remember the one) and decided that after an hour or so of drunken mingling, I needed to liven up the joint a bit. This manifested itself in my declaring my undying school spirit to all in the room and crawling into the college president's lap as he sat in some chair, to give the stately African-American gentleman a kiss on the forehead and to try to enlist everyone in a round of "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow". Pam at this point, decides to extricate me from this spectacle, apologizing profusely for my lack of sobriety.

Apparently I resist leaving, not having spread as much cheer as I wanted, so Jeanette, a martial arts girl puts the hurt on my wrist to coax me along. Somewhere along the line we meet Jack, Pam's other teaching assistant who is roped into stuffing me into Pam's brand new Thunderbird. Somewhere along the way I inform Pam that I am going to barf in her car and she whips it over to the side and commands me out of the car. So out I go, but unfortunatly for me, Pam has pulled alongside a rather steep embankment and not knowing any better, I step off into space and proceed to roll down the embankment full tilt only to stop having become wedged underneath a sports car that was parked at the base. I guess I was wedged pretty good, because I still wear the scars where I was drug out from under the car by my arms.

Not knowing what to do with me, they took me to my mom's house. My mom is cool. She doesn't freak or anything, but does get a little miffed when I crawl into her downstairs bathroom to pray to the porcelain gods and get myself wedged between the toilet and the wall and somehow rip the toilet out of place in my attempt to get free.

I have a dim memory my mom's voice telling me to just go to sleep.

The Next Day

So at 5:30 am I awake up myself again and feeling like death warmed over. Strangely I am so hung over that I am beyond hung over. I put myself together because I am supposed to be in Tacoma. I collect my car at the college and go to Tacoma to set up Pam's presentation for her with the A/V and computer equipment.

The look on Pam's face when she saw I was actually, not only alive, but functional was one I'll not forget. Absolute disbelief. But I got her stuff done. I don't stay but head back home to crash. I tell her that when she gets back to town, I'll collect the equipment.

She calls me on breaks to tell me how horrible it is going and how she is going nuts, because she has enlisted this student to help her and the student is a bit of a whack job. Being Seattle Central, student whack jobs are a dime a dozen, but this one, Skye is a major leaguer. She is what I'd call now O.C.D. meets A.D.D. A totally goofy, twitchy woman about 40 who you know is destined to turn into the little old lady with 87 cats. And she's a talker. A real motor mouth.

Well, late in the afternoon, Pam calls me and says we need to hookup down at McCormick's (her favorite bar) and I need to cheer her up. I say sure and head down. Well, what I didn't know was that on my way down, Pam would start chatting up this guy, Dr. Dave and was quite happy to go off with him. She just had one loose end: Skye. Now, Pam is no idiot, she was going to pawn Skye off on me to entertain.

So I walk in and am greeted to the sight of Pam chatting up this dude with her back literally to Skye and Skye tormenting the bartender, Fred (the coolest barkeep ever). Pam ignores me for the most part as Skye locks onto the fresh meat.

Yak, yak, yak... I am trying to get Pam's attention, but Skye won't stop. Fred senses my dismay and pours me a pint. I am just about to enjoy my pint when another nasty Skye-ism starts. Not only does she talk a lot, she sprays while doing it. My beer falls victim almost instantly. I am just staring at my beer in shock, when Fred smoothly takes it away and has a fresh one waiting. I move my beer further away, but in a really animated moment Skye is able to nail it again. Again Fred saves the day. This time I insert myself between the Spray Queen and my beer. After a few moments, Fred hands me a napkin. I tipped Fred big ever after.

Finally after being ignored by Pam and spit on by Skye, I demand Pam's keys so I can load my car with the school equipment and get the hell out of Dodge. I should note at this point, if you had not guessed, Skye was a bit bombed.

So Pam tells Skye to give me a hand. Skye trundles out after me and helps me load the car. As I close the trunk, Skye launches into some weird lecture on Seattle architecture, pointing out the various downtown buildings. I nod politely and she has me look up at one of the nearby buildings. As I am doing so, she spins me around, puts me in this anaconda hug and proceeds to literally suck my face. It was like French-kissing a squid. I managed to squirm free and say something to the effect of "I am not that kind of boy!" meaning I still had a will to live.

I quickly escaped, Pam went off with Dr. Dave and who the hell knows what happened to Skye. But she turned up later so it could not have been too bad.

Pam and I had many more adventures, but I was always able to get her to beg forgiveness by growling in a low tone "Dr. Dave".

Why I Am Too Lazy To Be A Fanatic...

This blog has been deleted because the judges have voted it off the island as too boring.

Kimmi, Kimmi, Where Are You? Call Me, Baby!

A short, but somewhat humorous snippet...

So I have a dear friend who is under the weather and I'd been checking in on her daily with a text message so as not to wake her up. Well this is good and all and I was racking up good karma points until...

I typed in the wrong phone number into the phone for the text message. I was one digit off. Well I didn't realize I had done this and I sent off what would be a totally innocent message if you had the context and the receiver was the right person. But to a random stranger, well maybe not - without context.

Message was:

"Hey hon, how are you doing? Thinking of you..."

Well now the next morning while away from the phone I get a voice mail from the number I mistyped...

"Kimmi? Baby is that you? Oh I was so hoping you'd get back in touch..."

I ignored the message because I knew I wasn't Kimmi and well my desperate sounding drive-by text messaging victim was some dude.

Bored now.

Later that day the phone rings again and I miss it again. "Kimmi? Kimmi? C'mon, baby, pick up!"

Still bored now,

Even later, Mr. "Kimmi Doesn't Love Me Anymore" calls again. This time I pick up and feeling mischievous, lower my voice, "Hello?"

"Is Kimmi there?" says our lost soul.

Instead of telling him he had the wrong number, I simply say "No."

There is a long pause and then he hangs up.

Not so bored now.

I'm going to Hell.

Winter In Narnia 2008

So the plan was that I'd take two weeks off at Christmas and just putter around, doing a little of this a little of that. I knew I had several projects around the house that were in desperate need of getting done and the computer situation had gone completely cyber-jungle on me. So that was going to be the chores part of the holidays, but as rewards I would go out and visit friends, hit a few nice restaurants, fart about on the computer doing my facsimile of computer music or computer artwork, do the family thing and play Uncle Ross.

I would also take a day and hit the outdoor mall and casually finish my Christmas shopping taking in the the holiday ambiance watching the bustle and knowing that I was finally enjoying this holiday for once after long years of grinchiness.

Yeppers, that was the plan. How could I have guessed that Seattle would be hit with the snow storm of the half-century and that due to our collective snow preparedness, I would be reliving Stephen King's "The Shining" with a twist.

So first off, let me explain something now that comes into play a bit later. The house I live in has no central heating. If I get cold, which in a normal year is about three nights a year, I fire up the space heater in my office and my bedroom and just wear a thick sweater and I am good to go. Ok, so no heat going into the storm. Coincidently, this house has a bit of a history. In the Korean War, Seattle's north end city limit was 85th Street and I am at 97th, and this nice little house was one of the popular north end brothels. The layout of the house is very odd, but makes sense when you have that little factoid.

When the big cold hit, I fired up my meager space heaters and settled in. Winter in Seattle consists of snow for a day and then melting and rain. The weather site I use on the Internet hinted at worse, but really since it was calling for the storm on Wednesday and there was nothing, then I concluded they were wrong again. In this case they were a day early. But when it did hit, I found myself with two coolish rooms and the rest of the house a freezer. It was really intolerable to be anywhere but my office or bedroom. The restroom stops were cold reminders of when I used to ski. Nothing like putting bare butt on ice cold plastic. So when I actually had to leave one room, I scurried to the other room like a rat in a very cold maze. I actually left the orange juice out on the kitchen counter the night it hit 15 degrees only to have it mostly frozen the next morning.

So my house sits on a fairly steep hill, but not very far up the hill, so when it snows most of the time, I just muscle the truck out and get it on the main street at the bottom of the hill and I am good to go. Unfortunately this time was a little different. The truck's battery had gone flat.

The poor beastie needed a jump which was problematic because of the parking (no good access to the battery to jump off of another car). Given my super-intense phobia about jumping cars, this is actually okay with me. I had my chargers.

My car phobia comes from a time when I had no fear of electricity and jumping cars. I knew you could have some issue if you cross-connected and things like that, but my attitude at the time was retarded monkeys could do this kind of thing blindfolded, what harm could I come to? Lesson one for me: not all jumper cables are created equal. Some are absolute crap and well quite dangerous. Guess what kind I had? Lesson two: if you are going to jump a battery try jumping batteries that are not completely mismatched in power and size. Jumping a battery from a monster-sized Mercedes from the 70's to a tiny Toyota Celica (my darling "Car From Hell") is like mating a Newfoundland with a Scottish Terrier. Nothing good comes from it. It didn't help that I remembered some stupid tip that the jumper car should be running. So the Merc was kicking out even more electric fun. As I got out of the Celica after successfully jumping the car I got a rude surprise. Much to my shock and horror, I watched the black jumper cables quickly (and I mean seconds) go from black to dark gray, to lighter gray to ash color AND the leads start to glow red. I suspect that if I had not disconnected the cables as fast as I did, battery go boom. Strangely this has stuck with me since. But I am not afraid of slow charging battery chargers. Odd, huh?

So short story long, in theory I could get the truck going any time. Just needed to get out my trusty charger(s). Funny thing about chargers is they need to be charged. That requires you charge them with power and that requires a power cable. Yes, our hero has misplaced all of his cables and all his chargers are drained. This is starting to shape up to be a horrorfest. You know when you want to yell at the teenagers on screen, "Don't go make out in the van! There's a crazed axe-wielding killer waiting? Don't you know anything?" This was similar. "Why didn't you charge when you had the chance? Don't you know anything?"

So mobility impaired. I had the Lexus, but that was my last choice. Not a snow car.

So I am going to be indoors for a few days. Not a problem. I don't get cabin fever easily and had lots of unwatched DVDs and books to entertain me and being a computer whore, I can spend days zooming in and out of applications. Plus I could also chat with friends both on the cell and online. Plus that first day, I could do my online shopping for Christmas. The 18th. Yes, as you can see I am not very bright.

I had not done a lot of shopping online at Christmas and I had assumed 2-day shipping meant that the very second I hit the submit button, magic elves would whisk my order out of inventory and get it in the mail near the speed of light. Now the veterans of Christmas mailings are no doubt scoffing at my foolish, foolish naiveté. But when the email confirmations started to appear in my email that the package was just about to be sent at the same time I was actually expecting the package to arrive, all I can say I was glad I had the cover of bad weather when it came to explaining why most of the online gifts arrived late. I was even more grateful most of the people I was dealing with had the same line; "Sorry, UPS didn't make it."

Note to self: Online shop early.

So for the first four days I was set. In fact I was quite happy to have downtime and the excuse I couldn't go anywhere.

Then by about Day 5, I'd had enough. So I ventured out down the street to Fred Meyers to finish my Christmas shopping. Not quite the outdoor mall with ambiance, but it was better than a 7-Eleven “Post-it notes for everyone” Christmas. I also hit a nearby toy store, but it did not give me the joy of Toys 'r Us on Christmas Eve.

You see, the last several years I have had a holiday tradition of going to Toys 'R Us on Christmas Eve to witness the total carnage that out of control yard monsters can inflict in the Mecca of junior greed. It captures perfectly the spirit of the season my friend Wayland calls "Consuming for Christ". Ripped open packages litter isles and store employees wander the halls looking zombie-like and speechless pleading for someone to pop a cap in their brain to end the misery, As I write this, it occurs to me I really should make a Boxing Day jaunt to the store next year to see the after Christmas returns and bargain hunting. That could even be more apocalyptic. Hmmn. I'll have to make a note for 2009.

Now being quite used to hauling crap in cars, I had not taken into account that I would be walking up hill for about a half mile on ice and snow. My balance on a good day is is marginal. On the trek back there was sliding and swearing and gifts a' flyin'. Yes and since the main road had been somewhat cleared, there was dirty slushy snow that would be kicked up and flung by morons driving in the snowy part of the road not not the clear part. Again I curse the SUV owners. But after about an hour I made it home. Boy getting out was fun. I was so much more relaxed.

So Tuesday's big event was wrapping the presents. I have a bad habit of not wrapping gifts because, well, um, I am a single guy and well, I bribe others with my hopelessness usually - I am not trained well. Plus when I do wrap, it sort of looks like I am post doctorate of the Helen Keller Gift Wrapping Academy. But this year I would be better. So I got out the scissors and the paper. I scrounged up the Scotch tape only to realize I had about 6 inches left on the roll and no other gift tape. Was I going to go brave Snowmageddon just for tape? I tried other methods such as string and staples, but I drew the line at duct tape. Nothing says "I am a lame-ass" more than a thoughtful gift wrapped in duct tape.

So Christmas is approaching and several decisions were going to have to be made. I had an invitation to spend Christmas Eve with my friends Susan and Kevin. Kevin is a great cook and there would be great beer and wine, including my favorite beer of all time, the Belgium beer "Chimay Blue Label" and we'd watch DVDs and graze on gnosh and play with their dogs. I would crash there and have breakfast in the morning and we'd swap presents. Quite lovely. But I had to get there.

However, Union Hill in Redmond was not happening. It was closed they tell me, but with Greenwood somewhat treacherous, all bets were off.

Being alone on Christmas Eve was ok, if not a little lonely, but the next decision was Christmas itself. Since my mother was gone and my sister was on the east coast and my father had canceled his trip to Seattle, I had no immediate family, but I usually went to Wayland's moms for Christmas dinner and had been doing this for twenty years, so this was a tougher decision. I really wanted to go, but given she lived on Capital Hill (a very horrid area for snow) this was going to require me to resurrect my truck. So with the clock ticking, I set out to find the power cable for any charger to charge the truck. After giving up I hiked back down to Freddy's and bought yet another charger. Sigh... This was four or five now.

I got the charger home and opened it. WTF? It didn't come with a cable. It would take an extension cord. But I didn't know what bin or box I had sorted all these into. At one point, I had sorted all kinds of household things into bins for possible donation and abandoned the project and forgot the contents. Boy after several moves, you would think I'd be smarter.

Back into the snow to go down to Safeway. More slipping, more sliding. Finally a cable. Back home. So I charged up Mr. Battery Charger, but it was a very slow process. Eventually on Christmas day I brought life back to the Toyota and made my way to Capital Hill. It actually was quite an easy drive despite what I expected until I got to 19th Ave.

What should have been relatively clear was a giant icy-slushy rut-ridden joke of a street, But what can't be cured, must be endured so I proceeded to head down 19th. The snow was pretty wet and heavy and the ruts bounced the truck around like a lunar rover. I saw all these SUVs and little cars sliding and getting quite stuck. I needed to get a fair ways down the road, but after getting nearly stuck myself trying to yield the way to someone. I realized that I couldn't get any further and was just about to pull over and hike the rest of the way when lo and behold a plow comes along. Saved! I waited for Mr. Plow go by thinking that this was awesome. If he went all the way down 19th, I could just follow, This was where I got to experience first hand the city's absolute moronic mandates. As the plow past me by, I realized the the plow was leaving almost everything the way it was. Maybe it plowed a few inches off the top, but there was at least a foot of crap. So essentially he was making it just slightly less hard to drive this damn road. Still totally screwed up even after the plow.

Well I fought my way down and about a block away gave up. I walked it with my gifts.

So I did the second family thing. The nieces and nephews are all taller and one of them now stares down at me and says things like, "Play Mario Cart with me." only to be followed a while later with "You really suck at this, don't you?" I start to wax nostalgic for the old Commodore 64 days and he looks at me like I am speaking of ancient times. From his point of view I probably am.

Dinner and the gifts were fab, but I was fascinated with the social experiment of giving an 8 year old a computer and then telling him he can't build it until he gets home. I thought his little blood vessels were going to pop out of his neck at the stress. You could have fed the kid a bag of sugar and not got him as hyper.

I ended up crashing there for the night and the next day made the reverse trek in the same amount of snow, just slushier.

Not much else to say about my winter torment other than I ended up playing Cranium's Family Fun on New Year's Eve and had to stack a set of six diced sized blocks in a stack using only my elbows. You see where this goes...

I should have been drinking more, much more to be talked into that one...

And of this writing it is snowing...again.

The Car Gets Stolen - Part 3

So I am sitting in my newly recovered car and not happy. You see, the ignition is hanging from the steering column and I have no idea what to do. I am dripping wet and cold. I am out $110 and I know no one other than my sister in Bellignham I can call for help (and she's in classes). I think "rage" covers my mood. I cannot for the life of me imagine this day could get anymore botched than it was. Then I looked down at the gearshift and saw that indeed, the day could go even more bizarre.

Sitting next to my gearshift is, pardon the crudeness, a big, no huge pile of excrement.

A whopper. Huge. Gross. Beyond disgusting.

Something in me snapped. I was on the edge of a breakdown.

Not only had some bastard stolen my car, he had taken a dump in it. WTF?

So my spirit was dashed and my resolve was gone. I was lost. I sat there and despaired. But only for a few moments, because as my brain was un-shocking itself out of it's daze, it started to work the angles - literally. I thought to myself, given the interior of the car, how in the hell did Mr. Car Thief actually take the dump? I tried imagining myself doing this and no way did the angles work. More WTF? A dog perhaps? Big dog though. Still wasn't working for me.

A few moments pass and I realized that if I am going to get through this nightmarish day, I had to suck it up and deal. Working angles or not.

I did a quick priority list in my head and then started to execute to plan.

So I rummage in the back and find some papers that I can use to pick up the turd and chuck it out the door. Again, more WTF...

As I pick up the noxious waste, I realize both to my relief and absolute confusion, it is not real. It is a gag turd. A totally realistic, but very plastic gag turd. As I write this, I have no idea the how or the why of it, but gag turd it was. Okay one down, moving on.

I get out of the car and go into the office again to deal with the bimbette. I explain about the ignition and she says that "Billy Bob" or "Billy Joe" or some other "Deliverence" sounding name, could help me. She calls back and some portly yokel in denim overalls and a baseball hat motors out. We go look at the car.

He shrugs and says, "Why don'tcha just hot-wire it?"

I gape at him. "I don't know what they taught you in school, but I never had "Hot-wiring 101."

He spits his chew. "T'aint hard, you just get in and do this..." He proceeds to hot-wire the car. "That'll getcha back to Seattle." He looks at me like I am the stupidest city slicker he has ever met.

"Um, where is the nearest mechanic?" If Jethro thinks I am going to drive to Seattle in a recently stolen and now hot-wired car, he better switch up to a higher grade of malt liquor, clearly what he was drinking had him delusional.

"That'd be Roy's over on Something Street."

I thanked him and gingerly eased the car out of the lot. At one intersection, the car died and I had to re-hot-wire it. I was kind of pleased with myself, but also a little flummoxed because when in the hell would I ever need this new skill?

I got to the mechanic fine. Went in an told him my tale. He, out the the kindness of his heart and the grace of a true pro, puts me next in the queue, "We'll getcha fixed up and outta here in no time."

I sit and wait. As I am sitting and waiting, I listen to this guy do his thing. He is negotiating how to get some woman's car fixed on payments. I am shocked. He is like Mother Theresa of mechanics. He clearly owns the joint and is perhaps the nicest mechanic I had met, even today. Premium customer care. I'd bring my car to him in heartbeat going forward but I am tripped up by the fact I never plan on setting foot in Satan's backyard again.

Finally the car is done. Another $110. He takes the check no questions asked.

Yes, gentle reader, I am being lulled into a sense of the worst being over. But we know better, don't we?

So I am out of there. I hit I-5 going south and I am doing everything by the numbers. Best driving practices. No speeding, no recklessness. Just going to go home drop off the car and hit a bar and get blind, stinking drunk.

Five miles out of Bellingham, red and blue lights go off in my rear view mirror. I pull over and directions are blared at me over the bullhorn. Cop gets out of his car, gun drawn.

Next thing I know, I am legs spread, hands on the hood of the car. The cop is telling me I am under arrest for stealing the car. I respectfully wait until he is done telling me the computer has the car has stolen and I explain this is all a mistake and I can prove it. Well, the cop is sure he has got me and is very unresponsive to letting me explain my side of it. I finally convince him that the paperwork is in my coat pocket and if I can show it to him, it will explain everything. Very carefully, because I know he is completely ready to send me to Valhalla, I produce the paperwork. He looks it over and chuckles.

"Son," he says with a bit of a drawl, "do you know how many cars are stolen every year?"

I shrug meekly "Dunno, a lot?"

"Son," he continues, "do you know how many cars are recovered a year?"

Again meekly. "Dunno, not so many?"

"Son," he says with a bit of a grin, "do you know how many get stolen and recovered in less than 24 hours?"

I reply miserably, "Mine."

He hands me my paperwork and wishes me a nice day. If only my knees would quit knocking with the thought that the car could still have been hot-wired.

I drive back to Seattle and drop off the car, go to the bar and drink myself into a coma.

Epilogue

A few weeks have past and I get a call from my mother, whom I had been using as my permanent address.

"Ross, I think your car has been impounded." she said.

"Yeah," I told her, "that was a few weeks ago."

"No... I don't think so. This notice is dated a couple of days ago."

"Don't sweat it, Mom," I tell her. "It's just the system is slow."

Still unconvinced, she says, "If the car was in Bellingham, why is this notice from a towing lot in Madrona [a Seattle area]?"

That got my attention. I went down to the parking lot and the car was gone. I hadn't noticed because I had been bussing and hadn't needed to drive for a few days. Seems the Seattle cops were prowling the lot and ran my car plates that came up as a stolen car and they did me the favor of "recovering" it for me. Thankfully, Seattle at the time, didn't charge for the first five days of storage.

The first of many of "the Car From Hell" stories.

The Car Gets Stolen - Part 2

A technical point of clarification from Part 1, the car title had fully transferred but the cops had called my friend's parent's because I had no phone and they were the last known contact. So there, Wayland! Your memory is better than mine...

So the ride from Seattle to Bellingham was uneventful. I got to the bus station and my sister was there waiting for me to give me a ride to the police station.

"Hey, I hope this doesn't screw you up too much, " she said, "but I have a class in half an hour and I won't be able to stay."

"No problem," I reassure her, "I'll figure it all out and get the car and just head back. Not a problem."

Jinx.

I jinxed it right there.

So Bellingham is a smaller town and the cop shop reflected that. I'm not a cop fan, nor am I a cop hater. In fact mostly, my experience with cops have been about getting tickets. So when I go in I am surprised that this is like waiting at the dentist. The crowd is a little anxious, but resigned to it's collective fate. Finally I am called.

I go into a little office with four hugely piled on desks and people taking notes and typing stuff. It reminds me somewhat of "Hillstreet Blues" if the show was cast with people from rural America.

"Hi," said the cop I was assigned to. I sat down and told him my tale.

"Uh huh, uh huh," he said typing stuff into his IBM Selectric for his report.

"Well, seems easy enough," he finished. "All I need is your license, the police report and the car registration..."

I looked at him a little startled.

"Well, I have the first two, but the third is in the car," I tell him, thinking this sounded perfectly reasonable.

"Oh, well, I can't release the car to you."

"What?" My brain is locking up at this point. All this way and no Plan B.

"Wait a minute," I protest. Falling back to my previous cop experiences, "If you have my license and license plate number, you can run it on the computer to see if I own the car, right?"

He squinched his face, "Yeah, I suppose..."

"Well?" I shrug my shoulders. My options were limited. I should have brought doughnuts as incentive.

He walks over to the computer and after a few moments comes back satisfied.

I hand him over the i.d. and police report. He looks at both and then looks at me again.

"We've got another problem," he said somewhat sheepishly. "I can't release the car to you. The officer who filled out the police report in Seattle didn't sign it."

Officer Doughnut strikes again from afar. I close my eyes and count to ten.

"Surely," I soothed, "you don't think I have a stash of blank Seattle Stolen Car reports that I fill out and pass off to cops God knows where to get back eleven year old cars do you?"

Clearly this was a Miss Manners moment he has not planned for. He goes to talk to the dude in charge. He comes back.

"Now we don't normally do this," he says like he's just hooked me up with his supermodel sister, "but seeing as how you bussed up and all, we'll let this slide." I am both ticked and grateful that this copper is making the little people do the jig for him, but at least I can move on.

I put on my best "Gosh, what would I do without you, Officer?" mask and settle up the paperwork.

"Where is the car actually?" I asked assuming, like in the Rockford files, it'd be around back.

"Oh, yeah, you go out the door, walk down to Someplace Store on Something Street and go left until you come to Some Other Place Store and it's behind that."

"Thank you so much!" I gush.

So it is February. Cold and overcast. I set out on my little walk. Hmmn. Someplace Store is further than it sounded. So after many blocks, I reach Someplace Store and turn left. It is about this time that the Heavens open up and start dumping freezing rain. Within another few blocks I was soaked.

Even better, what the cop failed to tell me was that Some Other Place Store was actually across Belligham. I walked the breadth of Bellingham in the freezing rain.

I think it can't get worse. I was wrong.

I get to Some Other Place Store finally and find the building behind it. Sure enough there is a lot and there is my baby. At last.

So I go into the lot's office and there behind the counter is a vapid, bubblegum snapping wench looking bored.

"I'm here to get my car," I tell her and I hand over all of the paperwork.

She looks it all over, types something in her computer and looks at me with her bovine eyes, "That'll be $110,"

"No f-ing way! What?"

She rolls her eyes, "Five day storage..." Like she is explaining to a toddler.

"Fine," I say. Make this pain end.

"Check ok?"

She nods. I fill it out and hand it to her.

"Sorry, hon, " she hands the check back, "local checks only."

At this point all I have on me is my checkbook and ATM card which I would have gladly embedded in her forehead.

"Where is the nearest ATM?" I ask through gritted teeth.

"Oh, I dunno. I think the nearest one is Someplace Store on Something Street."

"Not far from the cop station?" I ask.

"Yeah," she says. Apparently ATMs are still a novelty in Bellingham in 1990.

So into the freezing rain I go. Every step I take I wish someone else dead. I get to the ATM, withdraw the money and trudge back to the lot. My mood is as foul as it gets. I am numb now I am so wet and cold. I get back to the lot and dripping water onto their floor I hand the woman there the money.

"Aw man," she says off-handedly, "Had I known you were walking, I coulda called the check in." She smiles as I feel myself want to lunge at and strangle her.

"Can I get the receipt, so I can get my car and go?"

"Here ya go, have a nice day!" She says. I look at her and if I had heat vision her head of bad, big hair would have been charred crispiness.

And again I think it can't get worse. I was wrong.

I go out to the car and open it. Slide into the car seat and stick my key into the ignition. Turn the key as the sense of something is horribly wrong strikes me. For you see, I am now looking at the various wires and parts of my ignition dangling from the steering column. This car is going nowhere.

And again I think it can't get worse. I was wrong.