Knocked Out of Me

Steve-O's wife and her sister were in town this past week for a trade show and on Thursday night I met up with them. The sister had met a couple of guys from Richmond who had come to the trade show as well, one a writer for Style Weekly. The writer, a young guy, was a whip, a fast thinker with a sharp tongue who kept commenting on the music playing at the bar we had met up at. He made note that he'd written a review of a recent album,

"and I kinda wrote it like this, sorta, how could the album be bad, you know. And then I went into how all the band members were actually [the good members from other bands] and that you'd think if you got that much, you know, that much talent that you ought to come out with a good album. And so the album was good, yeah, ok, whatever but it's not anything like the first one. . ."

Which got me really thinking about this idea, and it was about writing and nothing to do at all with the band or with this guy or. . . I was going to make a point Friday night.

But Thursday night it got late and it was time to go and we all left and I walked with them back in the direction of my car. I walked the ladies to their hotel and wished them well and went on around the corner. And when I got to where my car should have been I realized that it wasn't there at all. So I walked another block, only my car wasn't there either.

One half-hour later a squad car arrived and the officer told me to open the door and sit in the front seat. Another squad car pulled up and the windows came down and the visiting officer asked what was going on and my officer said "stolen vehicle". They both remarked about how odd that was and that "cars just don't get stolen down here". But really we were waiting for a call back from the impound lot to see if it had been towed. My officer had a secret number, different than the one I had which kept me from getting through. The visiting officer at one point said,

"God I hate this job. Every day that goes by I hate this job more, I swear to God."

"You guys have a tough job," I said knowing that a lousy call to the impound lot isn't necessarily in anyone's job description.

"It's not the streets. The streets are easy to deal with it's the administration."

The rest of that conversation. . .

So, my officer was very kind and drove me home once we found out that my car had been towed. He told me about his children and his wife and the hours that he works (spending nearly 48 hrs straight with next to no sleep), that he coaches his daughter's soccer team, takes his children to school, picks them up, helps them with their homework. He told me his oldest daughter is amazing, "She's amazing, just amazing. Everything that girl touches turns to gold, I'm not kidding. She's in all GT classes and getting straight A's. Just brilliant." His son had been throwing up for 2 weeks straight with some kind of stomach bug and he had just taken him to the doctor that afternoon before work. I got home at 1:45AM.

When I got into work I cleared up some issues that were pressing for the day and then set about to calling the impound lot who noted they wouldn't release the car until the Parking Fines Division let them know how much I owed in parking tickets. They can flag your car to be towed at any point in time once you have received 3 parking tickets. I had paid one of the 3 already but it was never removed and has continued to accrue charges. When you call the Parking Fines Division you typically have to wait 15-20 minutes before you get through to anyone and so I just hadn't had the pluck to contest it. Until Friday that is. When everything was looked through and the confirmation numbers were verified they admitted that they "towed the car in error". I pointed out that I shouldn't then have to pay the $195 towing fee and they agreed. Just because we agreed though didn't mean I wouldn't have to pay. I had to pay the total $468 and file a complaint with the States attorney if I wanted my car that day.

At the impound lot there was a woman who was sobbing. The tow truck driver had lifted her car up onto the bed of the truck when it came loose of the chains and crashed back to the ground totalling it. She was a little bit upset and by this time I was getting pretty tired of the whole ordeal. My car, when I got it, appeared to be in the same condition, more or less, as when I had left it and for that I was grateful. I was on my way back to the office and smoking my first cigarette of the day (Friday the 13th, not a good day to quit) when I pulled up at a stop light. And that's when it happened: a loud bang, my body against the seatbelt, my jaw clapping shut, and the idea I had about writing the night before knocked completely out of me.

The woman who crashed into the back of me got out of her car rather frantically apologizing while I sat in my car and put my head in my hands and closed my eyes and started laughing. When I did get out of the car I said nothing. She told me she was having a medical emergency and that she was sorry and I said nothing. We looked at the cars and neither actually LOOKED damaged (which she pointed out to me 2x) and then I stood and stared at her. I honestly couldn't think of a single thing to say and all I could notice was that she looked panicked and that she was certainly hoping we weren't reporting this. And then I hugged her and told her I hoped her day got better and got back into the car and instead of going back to the office I went home. What was that I was going to write about writing?