"YOU LOST MY CAR?!?!"
Somehow the staggering absurdity of the moment managed to prevent me from pouring lethal quantities of vitriol over the telephone line to the local municipal pencil pushers.
The way it works in MonStreal, y'see, when they're planning to clean the snow, is that twelve or so hours before they clean one particular side of the street, they put out these little orange signs that say "no parking from 7am to 7pm" or "no parking from 7pm to 7am".
If you're still parked when those hours roll around, they tow your car to the nearest free spot several blocks away, bang it around a little, and charge you $92.
And sometimes they even clean the street afterwards.
Well, considering that I'd left my flat at 6:30am on Saturday... I didn't see the signs go up, and since the street was actually relatively manageable (I didn't need to gid myself into OR out of the spot) I figured I was alright for the day.
Especially on a weekend. Who the hell gets municipal workers to work on the WEEKEND?!?
My neighbourhood, apparently.
So lo and behold, I return from a day on the slopes on Saturday to an empty space where my car should be, and proceed to spend hours scouring the neighbourhood for it before we came across a tow truck who gave us the number to call.
Y'see, you call (514)872 - 3777 and give them your license plate number, and they say something like:
"Your car is on Sherbrooke street, around the 6224 address"
Which is where they'd towed it to this morning, since apparently I'd parked in between sweeps last night -- so there were no orange signs left and I'd figured the street was empty because it had just been cleared...
...I didn't realize that they would be clearing it a SECOND time.
Whoups.
So I walk. And walk. In the morning snow, in not-very-sensible shoes.
I walk the five long blocks, carrying hockey equipment, to where "6224" should be.
Of course, 6224 Sherbrooke Street doesn't exist, the buildings skip from 6220 to 6240.
And of course, my car was nowhere to be found.
And I was cold.
And the pay phone was cold against my ear as I called them back and said "I can't find where you put my car"
and they said
"it's at 6224, are you sure you can read?!?"
and I said "YES, I can bloody well read, and no, 6224 doesn't even EXIST so how could you have parked it there?!?"
Well, and hour of wandering the neighbourhood AGAIN, and ten or so irate phone calls to the same telephone operator who finally decided to call the people who'd actually done the towing to find out that there'd been a typo and it was actually 6024, a block from where I'd managed to walk back to by that point...
Anyway...
I got to shout "YOU LOST MY CAR?!?!", and it was appropriately ridiculous.
And I have an earache from pressing the cold phone to my ear
and every time I cough the world starts spinning.
And I'm starting to feel very tired today, and I should leave the office now, I have so many errands to run before I head out to the Monty Python Partay which David is coming along too, only I'm somewhat dreading it because of an e-mail I just received from him, asking if we were really dating.
I don't know how to tell him that when I realized that he really didn't understand poetry, I couldn't look at him fondly anymore.
Did I mention that THEY LOST MY CAR?!?!? And I still get to pay them a total of $184 for it.
Whoupdeedoo FUCK.