Breakdown

One day a couple of months ago I was at work, minding my own business, when I got a call from the Police Department. The officer said, "We have a Chevy van registered to you, it's disabled and it's blocking traffic at …” and she gave an address that’s about a block from my house.

Norman had my van that day, and right away I got worried—what had happened to my van, and why wasn't Norman there? Was he in an accident? So I told the officer that I'd call Norman on his cell phone. She said, "No, I'll call him, what's the number?" So I gave her the number and hung up. Then I thought about it, and started wondering: how did the police call me at work? They’d have my home address, and presumably could get my home phone number, from my car registration. But why would they have my work number? How would they even know where I work?

A minute later, while I was still pondering this mystery, the phone rang again. It was Norman.

"What's going on?" he demanded."Why are the police calling me? I'm at home. Your van is in the garage."

I said, "But they said my van was blocking traffic..."

"Not your van, your company’s van!" he said. "You have a Chrysler, not a Chevy!"

In the words of Gilda Radner, AKA Emily Litella: "Oh. That's different. Never mind!"

Now, first of all, I don't actually know the difference between a Chrysler and Chevy.

Secondly, they both start with C.

Third, when the policewoman said "We have a van registered to you," I thought she meant you, as in me.

And fourth, I didn't even know my company owned a van. So I called the boss, and asked her if we owned a van, and she said we did. I told her it was blocking traffic, and she told me to page the maintenance man, since he had gone somewhere with the van.

So I paged him.

He didn't call back.

I called the Skokie Police and started to explain that it wasn't my van, it was the company’s van...but the policewoman cut me off and said, "We know all about that, the van's been towed." So I got the name and address and phone number of the place it had been towed to and hung up and called the towing company to find out what we had to do to get the van back. They said we needed to fax them a release form and proof of ownership and bring in a check for $135.

About 20 minutes later, the maintenance man showed up in my office. He was all sweaty and red-faced and out of breath and looked angry, and when I told him the van had been towed, he said, "I'm not walking another six miles." I couldn't figure out what he meant; another six miles? Where had he been? Between his anger and his accent, it was really hard to understand what he was saying, but eventually I pieced together the story:

A few hours earlier, he had picked up the van from a nearby repair shop, and went to do an errand.

The van broke down on a busy street in front of a Walgreens. He left the van in the street, blocking traffic, because he couldn’t move it.

But why wasn’t he there when the police came? "Where did you go?" I asked him.

"Well, I needed a few things--some batteries, some light bulbs--so I went into Walgreens."

Evidently he was angry that the van had broken down because the mechanic had just assured him that it was fixed. So when it broke down, he called the mechanic to come and get it. But then he went shopping, leaving the van blocking traffic. And when he came out of the store, the van was gone--so he just left.

He didn’t call anyone. Not the police. Not us. He walked back to work.

Hence the six miles.

It took him an hour and a half.

I spent the rest of the afternoon finding the title and insurance papers for the van, and getting the bookkeeper to write a check for $135, and getting the boss to sign it and filling out the release form the towing company faxed me.

Next time I am not answering my phone.