Living in this town, btw, is oft times like living in an horrifying mix of "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane", "Swimming With Sharks" and "Pee Wee's Big Adventure."
K and I had to go, on Friday, to the local market for his bananas and cat food, perhaps a few other items like cereal and milk and crocodile repellent (aha, you laugh, 'crocodile' repellent'! Tis true: every single year that I have lived here in Tiny Town, the mayor of a tinier town just north of us, place called "Battleground" has been out, cruising the 'hood'. At 2 a.m. Always 2 a.m. And every time he has found and crocodile. A real live crocodile. I think the guy just wants to get re-elected to Tinier Town and thinks his pet croc will do it for him. And it has! So far.)
About (and these dates are NOT perfectly exact, but they're close enough for crocodile-mayor work) 3 months ago, our car decided it would not start, and instead made a "click click click" noise. We called the phone number on the "free" card that AAA sends out by the millions, and said our car needed to be towed to Aamco. The woman at AAA asked for the number on the card. I gave it to her. She said there were too few numbers. I explained that this card was that "free service" for a month card, and I was now attempting to use it. The card, with the word FREE said that AAA would pick us up and tow or give jumpstarts or whatever, for FREE, which was writ in large and friendly letters on the front of the cardboard card.
The large and friendly letters became wee and nasty in short order: she said that, in order to use this "free" card until the expiration date of one month from that moment, I would have to pay their yearly AAA card fee.
Um........ What part of the word "free" were we having trouble with? I was fairly, no, I was extremely adamant that they honor the card's statement that nearly anything we needed (like a TOW) would be FREE.
She argued. And, by now, we all should know what happens when you are speaking to me and I get quiet, steady and very polite in my responses: it means I am incredibly pissed off. She didn't know that. She kept talking about this being a poimpv40wr9y8n] -wmiroti gmp[swo: ((no, really, that's what I heard).
When she stopped talking I asked for a supervisor. Now. And I got one. She made me tell the story again, and said that the first operator was correct, and that the "free" on the card required that I pay for a full year of AAA card ownerage.
I got quieter. I was insistent, but quiet. She tried to fight back, but it had become a losing battle for her, as if she were in the freezing waters of the North Atlantic and I was in a dinghy smacking her with an oar that read "Titanic".
She finally caved. She said a truck would be by soon. I said, "See? Wasn't that easier than trying to pick a fight with a woman from A) L.A. and B) DETESTS losing an argument?" She hung up on me.
(I would have, too. Probably.)
The truck showed in about ten minutes. It took our car, and us, to the Aamco. The Aamco people (and the tow driver and the mechanic AT Aamco) all agreed that it sounded like the car needed a starter. For $300.00. So, while I turned tricks behind the store to make enough money to pay for the starter, K waited in their creepy little waiting room (btw, if anyone thinks that I actually turned tricks to earn the money? Peff. Move on. We just wouldn't be able to buy victuals for the rest of the month.)
The mechanics returned and told us our car DID NOT need a new starter, but a new alternator.
Now, while I have a nauseating tendency to deprecate myself, I do have a brain knocking around in there, and I asked 1) why and 2) how much more. The answers were "Dunno" and "$125.00". I said, "Go ahead, and I want the old parts."
We had no choice. I made Kimit go turn tricks to make up the difference and in went our new alternator. When the car was presented to us, running now, I asked for the parts they'd removed.
"Oh, Lorda mercy!" they,cried, "We threw them away!" I said, "Go get them." They all looked like little kids smeared with frosting and claiming to have had nothing to do with the giant hole in the birthday cake.
The owner of this crap joint told us that all they could find wrong with the car (aside from the mysteriously missing alternator) was that our battery had corrosion on one of those bumpy things, which they scraped off, and "did you know your dome light is on?" Yes, I replied, I did know what, because I had accidentally turned it WHEN WE GOT THERE. Then the owner said, "Well, we got the new part in, and the only other thing you need is a tune-up. Car runs a little rough." No mention of a new battery. A new dome light. A new set of headlamps. Bupkis.
I told him we'd make other arrangements for the tune-up, after picking myself up from the floor where I had fallen when he told me the tune-up would cost ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS.
Yep. Me, to.
When we got home, I reported this entire conversation an happenstance to the Division of Fraud in the Indiana Attorney General's office, along with the BBB, local cops, and the Governor. The Fraud division was (and remains) VERY interested in all this, and I made sure Aamco knew it.
Skip ahead two weeks. We're in a market parking lot. And the car goes "click click click." K stayed steady. I wanted to find a gaffing hook and find that motherfucker from Aamco. But, I pumped the gas, we waited, tried again, and the car started. We got home. We parked. The next morning? "Click click click."
I called Aamco again, and told them in no uncertain terms that they will be sending out a towtruck (which the woman answering the call said was no problem, as they had a contract with a towing/garage service- this will become a large "whoopsie!" for them later), pick us all up and they will FIX THE DAMNED CAR.
We got picked up, towed, the tow guy disappeared and we waited.
For them to jump start the car. They presented it to us, and in we got. Before I got in, however, feeling a little generous, I went back inside and told them that their ponytail palm tree in the lobby needed more light, and how to water it, and all sorts of nice, useful plant care information.
Fuck, I am stupid.
On the way home from that trip, I stopped and started the car 5 times, within two blocks if the Aamco. The car restarted every time. Three weeks later, car's in the garage, we need to go pick up some medicine.... click click click.
We called them and repeated nearly the entire playlet from above. This time, the towtruck (from the same garage as the first) guy said he could tow us to Aamco, or to HIS garage, wherein there would be a $30.00 charge for the tow added to whatever else his place might have to do. We declined, and he took us back to Aamco.
Which is where we met, not the owner, Tom, nor the phone gal: we met a "mechanic "
who looked as if he would lose a debate with Babe the Big Blue ox. Truly: I was expecting him to be using a drool cup any moment.
I tried to reason with this guy. He said he couldn't help me until we paid the tow truck driver $30.00.
Hah?
More words were said; few were understood. After 1/2 hour I had, as I always say, had it, and K and I left the waiting room demanding the return of our car; we couldn't see it. Dorkface then (I LOVE this part) told us the car was in the bay right next to the office. I went out again, and sure enough, there was our own big blue ox, running, with the garage door halfway closed; their thinking, I am sure, was that I could neither get at the car nor get the car out of the garage door was partly closed.
Aw, poor idiots. I may have more poundage on me than is healthy, but I ducked under that door, and saw the phone answerer lady and Dorkface, who said "You have to pay the tow driver thirty dollars else'n (yes. 'else'n') I can't let you take the car! And you cain't (really:"cain't") open that there garage door.
I paused just long enough after closing the hood of my car, to look into the criminally pathetic face of Dork, and say, "Watch me". I went to the buttons on the wall next to the garage door and pushed..... hmmmm... Up! And up she went.
Dorkface then bleated "You take that car I'll call the police!" This was supposed to freeze my spine, I suppose, but, as I got into the drivers seat, belted in and backed up to pick up the boy, I rolled down my window and said, "I've always wanted to do this", and I sang a little bit of "Farewell and Adieu, to You Fair Spanish Ladies". As we departed, I did hear Dorface yell, "Call the cops!" and the phone answerer lady say, she really really did, "What's the number for 911?
And then drove like one fucking bat out of hell back to our house. Not five minutes later, one of our tiny town's finest was knocking on our front door. I popped up to the landing, opened the door and smiled my bestest don't arrest me smile because Officer No-Name (okay: a hint- his name was the same as a guy who used to drive NASCAR) had his hand on the holster of his eye-poppingly large gun.
He asked if I was who I was; yep, sezzi. "And this is your home?" "Yes, sir," sezzi. "And your car is parked in the closed garage, I'll bet?"
"Right on all counts," I replied. And he relaxed. You could actually see it. When he saw that I was not a mouth-foaming loonie (not right then, of course), he said, "So you know why I'm here?" And I nodded vigorously, and said, "But I'll be danged if I know why they called you out to try and get me to pay a bill of thirty dollars which was never my bill in the first place."
He became as stone, for a minor moment. Then he said, "Thirty... dollars?"
And all the cows came home. Dorkface, I realized, and so did Officer No-Name, had said to the dispatcher was that I had taken the car without paying the bill.
Except there was no bill. Not mine, anyway. I wasted 15 minutes telling him the tale, and at the EXACT SAME MOMENT we said, "It's a civil matter." He shook his head, muttered something that sounded awfully like "I am gonna smack that guy" but he smiled and gave me a tiny salute. Before he stepped over my azaleas to get back to the car, he looked at me one more time, and said, "Really? Thirty bucks?"
I said, "Yep. And I'll say it, cause I know you're thinkin' it: what a dumbass. Right?"
His grin was enough for me, I called out "Thanks for stopping by!" and he said "Thanks. You have a nicer day."
And I am still (chas v'chalilah) a Freebird.
Man, that was fun! (assuming I'm not taken in for the 30 dollars Aamco owes Jim's towing service).
See, stuff like this? I thrive on it. It's mothra's milk to me.
Aaaah.
Addition: I forgot to ask you! Do you think I "stole" my car by not paying 30 bucks which I was told would be paid by the garage my car was towed to? I knew, I don't know how, but I knew that Ofcr. No-Name would be by (remember, we're in tiny town) and I knew I just had to smile and speak in a voice that would not make me sound like an injured wolverine.
The fact that he didn't know that his time had been wasted because Dorkface called him "for stealing her car and not paying the bill!" (which had to be part of that conversation between phone answerer lady and dispatch, right?), as I said, made his face just go stony. I like to think he was thinking of ways he could make that Aamco and it's idiot operators just vanish from the face of the earth.
Maybe not. But more maybe, yes.