Monday, September 14, 2009

Top 10 reasons to not lose my shit ...

.... just because my car spent the weekend in a tow lot.

10. Because Kanye West, Serena Williams, Dick Armey, and about 20,000 fellow Americans I hope never to meet in a dark alley all lost their shit this weekend. It was roundly unattractive. And no need to pile on.

9. Because I didn't have a car when grocery shopping last night, I burned a mountain of calories hauling bags up the steps of multiple T stations. Yes.

8. There is no longer a justifiable reason for me not to drive to work for the sake of curbing pollution. I did not drive my car to work Friday morning, which is why I did not see the fresh "don't park from 7-5 today" signs, which caused a police cruiser to have to drive 2 miles round trip to ticket it, followed by a diesel-engine truck to make a 6.2-mile round trip to tow it, and then me to add 4 more miles this morning in picking it up, most of that idling through standstill traffic in Roxbury during rush hour ... totalling 12.2 miles of environmental waste.

7. After having to repeat it multiple times, I have finally memorized my license-plate number. Will be handy the next time I'm standing on a street corner looking at where I thought my car was parked, and perhaps I won't sound so brainless talking to the towing dispatcher.

6. I got to see the inside of a Boston Police Precinct for the first time and it wasn't in handcuffs!

5. For the first time in ages, I got to ride the Ashmont train south to my old hood, Fields Corner ... still as grimy and shady and covered with slow-moving pedestrians as I remember.

4.
The $156.78 charge to the towing company in Dorchester achieved 2 goals at once: stimulating that neighborhood's economy, while also earning my Priceline.com Visa crucial dollars towards my next flight. Score!

3. While watching the agreeable, young, bearded A & B Towing rep charge my Visa, I realized I didn't actually mind that my cluelessness was helping pay his salary.

2.
The zen from that realization lasted through the Roxbury slow-down (see #8) and into my office, where I found myself unexpectedly drawn to The Police's "So Lonely" when it came on the radio, happy that a song that uses the word "lonely" 40 times is actually pretty danceable, and then even happier to find that the version on YouTube features the band riding the subway. Riding the subway.

1. Writing a blog entry about a car gives me an excuse to print this photo of a car.

1 comment:

cousin j said...

Well done. Also, on a tangent based on your visit to the Precint, every citizen should do a Ride Along with police. Get on your metro police website, figure out the procedure, and go! One evening, pick a hairy part of town and get educated on what law enforcement does. Priceless. And free.