Melissa's Place

Good Uses for CAA – Part 2

This isn’t a recent event. I just thought of it while my friend Ryan and I were talking about the silly things drivers do. This is a story of me and a silly thing I did while driving and the poor impression the good folks at CAA must have of me.

I was Christmas shopping in Peterborough at a small strip mall with a Mark’s Work Warehouse. I always buy my brother clothes and he particularly likes the khakis they sell at Mark’s WW. I parked in the parking lot and went into the store to do my shopping. When I came back out of the store, I got into my car and was delighted to see that the car in front of me had pulled away. A pull-through! I relish the small joys in life. I threw my car, Jola, into first gear, pulled forward and was shocked by a loud Ba-Bump as my car was thrown into the air and then crashed down with a hard thud. I was only shocked for a moment as I had a sudden flashback to when I had initially pulled INTO the parking spot and seen the parking median between my spot and the one opposite. The excitement of a potential pull-through had distracted me from this fact, and so I now sat with my front and back tires straddling a parking divider. Poor Jola sat helplessly up to her metal armpits in cement and as I panicked and tried to pull back off the divider, she squealed in agony. I thought maybe I could just drive forward with enough momentum to yank her back wheels over the divider too, but when I began to instill that plan I could immediately feel Jola’s guts being wrenched out from underneath her. She complained quite loudly.

So I got out of the car and saw a big, strong man with his girlfriend standing a few parking spots over. They weren’t trying too hard to conceal their giggling. It occurred to me that maybe this man could help me lift my car off the parking divider and rescue me from my predicament. He shrugged and asked, “Do you have CAA?” When I replied that I did he grinned and said, “You’ll need it.” And off they went.

So I phoned CAA from a payphone. They said they would be there to help me in 20 minutes. I had forgotten my jacket in the car, but I was so embarrassed that I preferred to stand there huddled in a half-phone-booth than to stand next to the idiot’s car.

Finally, my rescue tow truck pulled into the parking lot. I went to greet him only to discover that he could not lift Jola over the parking median because some asshole with a PT Cruiser had parked, yes actually PARKED, in the half parking spot containing Jola’s stranded front end. As if the mortification was not acute enough, we had to go into Mark’s Work Warehouse and have the cashier put an announcement over the PA system to have the PT Cruiser owner come and move his car so the loser who was stuck on the cement parking divider could get a tow truck to unstuck her.

I felt like an idiot. Jola felt embarrassed too.
But I’m sure I gave at least a handful of people something to laugh about over Christmas dinner.