by Linnea Snyder
Photo: © Depositphotos.com/stockasso
Waiting for a tow truck in the guest parking lot of the apartment of someone who doesn’t love you back is a pretty sucky experience. It’s even worse when it’s 6am, the day after Thanksgiving, raining outside, and you’re nursing a slight hangover. I sat in the driver’s seat of my beater Volvo, legs tucked up under the steering wheel, listening to the fuzzy Christmas carols of the hold music on the other end of the line. After a half hour of “Frosty the Snowman” on loop, a woman picked up the phone, clearly not happy to have to be working on the holiday weekend.
“Are you currently in a safe place?” she curtly asked.
“Yes.” I replied, immediately regretting my answer as she once again put me on hold. I wasn’t safe! I was 22, my car was a piece of crap, and my heart was broken. How dare she ask if I was safe when the answer was clearly that I wasn’t?
After another half hour of staring out the windshield at a sign that clearly stated that my car would be removed against my will by Bruffy’s Towing if I did not get it out of there by 8am, the same woman came back on the line. I wondered if she was the only person working the phones at the hour when most people are still recovering from a tryptophan coma. After answering the basic questions like my car make, model, and mileage, and my insurance ID number, we got into the real meat of the issue.
“What’s wrong with your car?”
“Well, I actually just got it fixed at the mechanic’s a few days ago and they said it was a broken gas pump, but they said that they replaced it and now I’m kind of confused because the car won’t start, but it makes a different noise than before. Like before, the car would stutter for a while but now it just makes this “rrr, rrr, rrr” noise, but won’t turn over. Also my gas light’s on, but I’m pretty sure I’m not out of gas.”
“Uh huh. Car won’t start.”
How could she just be writing down “car won’t start” after that in-depth description I just gave her? I wondered, clearly not realizing how crazy I sounded.
“And where are you currently, honey?”
I must sound really crazy, I began to think, she’s started calling me ‘honey.’
“Marina del Rey, California,” I replied, trying to sound as mature and composed as possible.
“House or apartment?”
“Well, it’s this big apartment complex.” Damn it, Linnea, keep your answers short.
“Someone’s on their way.”
Now what to do. I figured that my mentor wouldn’t be happy to hear that I had once again slept with my ne’er-do-well coworker, my friends were all sick of hearing about this, now off-again, guy, and I’m pretty sure that sitting in your car in the parking lot of a ritzy apartment complex with an ocean view, crying about awesome sex you had would not be the kind of call my mom wanted to receive. So instead I sat changing the noise my iphone makes when someone tweets about me. If only I were friends with Lena Dunham, I thought to myself. She would sympathize.
After what seemed like hours, my phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Yes, ma’am, I’m here to tow your car.”
“I don’t see you.”
“I’m out front.”
Suddenly, a bolt of panic shot through me. My car was parked in long, narrow alley-turned parking lot. How in the world was a tow truck going to get to me?
“Well, I’m all the way down at the end!” I exclaimed in to the phone, my eyes beginning to water. At this point, it was all too much. I wanted my bed, I wanted my cat, I wanted to be home with my vegetarian family where the entire Thanksgiving conversation didn’t center around why I don’t eat turkey.
“Ok, ma’am, don’t worry, I’ll walk down to you.”
At this point, it was starting to get light outside, and even though he was walking toward me from the west, I swear that at that moment, it seemed as if the sun shined a little brighter behind the tow truck man. He was dressed in dirty overalls and carried a red can in his hand. He may as well have been David Hasselhoff in his prime, coming towards a drowning me, holding out a life preserver. And even though here he was, my savior, my knight in shining armor, the first words out of my mouth were less than perfect.
“I don’t think my car’s out of gas!”
“Well can we just try?”
“I’ve never run out of gas before,” I sputtered. “I’m so careful about it! One time when I was 8, my dad ran out of gas on the freeway and then he had to walk with my sister and I into a bar to call my mom. It was traumatizing.”
The tow truck man, who had definitely seen way more shit in his life than I had, nodded knowingly and brushed past me to my gas tank. I stood tapping my foot.
I know better than him! I thought to myself. What experiences does he have that I don’t? One time, I almost had a threesome. I’ve met Catherine Zeta-Jones. I dated Haley Joel Osment’s stunt double! I should know whether or not my car has gas in it.
The tow truck man finished up and put down the gas can. He ignored me standing there looking indignant and got into my driver’s seat. He turned the key. And I have to say, when I heard the sound of my engine turn over I wanted to simultaneously hide in shame and cry with joy. Instead, I threw my arms around the tow truck man. I don’t think he was expecting it because all he said was “this is covered by your car insurance…have a nice day.”
I sat in my now-working car. Suddenly the world didn’t seem so bad. Maybe my car was fixed for good this time (it wasn’t). Maybe things would work out after all with this guy (they didn’t). And maybe life would just get a whole lot better (it did). And so off I drove into the LA sunrise, a 22 year old who knew everything about the world, with a full tank of gas.
***
Linnea Snyder is now 3 years older than she was in the above story, and so now really does know everything there is to know in the world. She lives in Los Angeles with her boyfriend and their two cats. In the real world, Linnea works in reality television, but in her elaborate non-work world, Linnea writes comedy and performs improv at iO West and UCBLA. You can find Linnea’s comedy page at https://www.facebook.com/