The Tow Files: Home-Dumbing

[nutraxfornerves]

ABE Books is a great place to find obscure used books. They are a clearinghouse for used book stores all over the place--mostly US & UK, I think. They have everything from cheap paperbacks to a $37,000 18th Century travelog I just spotted.

It's a great place for making sure that your spare cash is no longer spare.

[wordgirl]

I have to confess, I did the receipt-retrieval thing once. when I was young and heedless. Some friends were having a barbecue at the beach, my then-boyfriend wanted to stop for "just a minute" to grab a libation and didn't want to pay the beach toll, so he convinced me to park at an adjacent fast food joint. One libation became two, with a side of bro talk and some grilled shrimp, and me getting increasingly nervous.

Finally I went to check on the car just as the truck was pulling into the lot; fortunately I had the presence of mind to go into the restaurant on the side away from the parking lot, grab a receipt and bolt out the other door.

I'm 90 percent sure tow guy knew I was scamming and cut me a break. I also freely admit that I made the decision not to put my shirt on over my bikini top in an effort to convince him to do the kinder thing. He could easily have unravelled the whole mess by going into the fast-food joint ... I'm pretty sure they called for the tow after watching us park and head for the dune walkover.

I was slightly punished in addition to the humiliation .. I told my sister about it and she promptly told my parents I was at the beach instead of being in class 45 miles west of there, where I was supposed to be.

[WishfulSpirit]

Ah sports. Literally the only reason I have the local team schedules on my phone is the fact that I have to commute to areas near the stadiums and want to know when it's going to be busy. I honestly don't care who hurled what ball through what apparatus. My coworker, on the other hand, will wear her Horsey Jersey whenever they play and have the game streaming if we're not busy. It hasn't been a great season so I hear a lot of under her breath curse words.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

It's soda, and for drinking purposes, I drink Pepsi™.

Also for the record, we don't have Coke products in my house. We like Pepsi.

Personally I prefer either Diet Pepsi or Diet Dr. Pepper. But I have a Mom who cannot stand diet drinks.

[Ironclad Alibi]

Also for the record, we don't have Coke products in my house. We like Pepsi.

Mrs. IA and I also prefer Pepsi products, but we do keep a few cans of Coca-Cola for medicinal purposes. It's great for upset stomachs. I haven't looked for any recently but Coca-Cola syrup used to sold in drug stores to treat such ailments.

[EricKei]

My parents always gave us small doses...er, glasses, of ice-cold Coke when felt ill/had upset stomachs as kiddles. Glad to see there really was a good reason for it, and not just a placebo They told us to sip it reeeeally slowly, so I always suspected that half of the purpose was to keep us quiet!

As for the syrup -- I haven't seen any soda syrup available independently aside from Root Beer base (Zatarain's or Barq's back in NOLA), or the occasional red (nectar) soda. At an Italian joint where I used to work, pressing the edge of the dispenser buttons on the bar's soda gun just right would yield a slow stream of pure syrup. I used to do that all the time to make triple-strength DrPeppers. Ohhhhh so good!

[Sapphire Silk]

I was in Pittsburgh just last week. Nightmare of a town to drive in . . . gorgeous skyline at night.

Thankfully, I kept my car at the hotel and took the hotel shuttle when I needed to go somewhere. Or I walked.

I had a car rental company come after me for a scratch on the bumper. Which fortunately I could prove was not there when I turned the car in (thank god for cellphone cameras). I can't imagine them letting some doofus ruin not one, not two, but three cars and writing them all off.

[panamared]

Fuck I love your posts.

Your SC's encounter real world consequences of their stupidity. Mine only destroy their credit rating, which takes time to hurt their next loan, credit card or refinancing of their mortgage, and isn't that big a deal to them until later. But losing your car, that hits you the next day

[Jay 2K Winger]

But losing your car, that hits you the next day

"The next day you notice it's missing" you mean.

Arga's mentioned people who don't notice their car's missing for several days.

[Argabarga]

Our winner this year was 22 days

[notalwaysright]

Our winner this year was 22 days

Whaaaat. The longest I go is maybe two days, if I happen to get my days off in a row. But I park so that I can see my car from a window in my apartment, so I would notice if it was gone. Baffling.

Very rarely did I get carsick as a kid, but when I did my parents gave me Sprite/7UP to settle my stomach. It's entirely possible that it was a placebo, since to get that soda we had to stop the car at a gas station, thus the movement that was causing my stomach to get upset was stopped.

[Seanette]

Our winner this year was 22 days

And let me guess, the storage fee well exceeded the value of the car.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Our winner this year was 22 days

I want to believe it was a case of "they parked it in the wrong place while going out of town for vacation/end of term break/whatever" and didn't realize it was towed until they got back...

...but this is Arga's neck of the woods, and given the monuments of stupidity he's had to deal with, I have zero problems believing it was just down to someone who was in town the whole time not realizing their car had been towed.

[Argabarga]

I'm guessing he knew it was gone by day 3, days 4 through 22 were just him trying to come up with a way to explain what happened to Mom and dad while still keeping diplomatic ties intact.

And the car was a newish minivan that was worth the fees, about two grand worth.

He had parked illegally on the street and had slipped an old (and unpaid) ticket under the wiper in the hopes parking enforcement would just pass him by.

They didn't, checked the ticket, got mad, gave him 2 fresh ones and called for a tow.

[Becks]

Our winner this year was 22 days

Had a car at the Lounge from either Valentines's Day or St. Patrick's Day (I no longer remember) until mid September.

I told anyone who asked that there was a dead body in the trunk.

The real story's not nearly as good as that.