How a Car (and Stupidity) Can *ALMOST* Ruin Your Life

Good afternoon. Good evening, Europe; I hope I didn't catch any of you at a bad time (though chances are a number of you are a) on the shitter, b) being shit on or c) in one of innumerable other 'compromising' positions). Such is life.

Such is my life.

We know I work in the restaurant industry - I bartend. It's decent coin, to be sure, but it's no career and it will turn you into a people-hater of the strongest variety. People are assholes.

Assholes aside [ed. note: hahah], it's a decent living even if the job sucks, and it grants me the freedom to pretty much do whatever the Hell I please in my spare time... when I have some. Regardless, this story starts with money and so that's where I'm going to start.

I wake up Tuesday morning, backflip out of bed as per the first steps of my morning regiment, and plunk into my computer chair to assess the excitement that awaits me in the day ahead.

The sun is shining; that's exciting. I don't work until five. That's also exciting. There's $700 in my wallet.

Pardon me?

I decide, after careful deliberation and several more backflips, that $700 is not really the smartest thing to have in my wallet, and so come to the brilliant conclusion that I must go to the bank.

I'd also like to go to the LCBO.

Now before you get on your broomsticks and start bitching and complaining, just let this one play out. I'm not a drunk, nor do I plan to be. The Supernintendo Chalmers incident was fairly isolated, if you'll remember. Regardless, I've got two places to go: the bank, and the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, and I've also got $700 in my wallet and make a decent living at my job. Maybe it's just me that likes recaps?

Sidebar. Because of this decent living I've started to succumb to delusions of grandeur, losing focus of the more important (and realistic) things in favour of a (briefly) exciting life. I've been thinking about getting a new car. However, to be fair, it's not just a new car.

It's this one:


For those of you unfamiliar with this car, it's the Nissan 350-boner-inducing-z. This one's a coupe. The one I was looking at was a standard 2004 350z, silver in colour, manual 6-speed short-shift transmission, with 72k kilometres on it.

I know, it sounds crazy - but it wasn't a brand new car and was listed, used, at $24 900. Alas, here I am trying again to justify this purchase when I've already decided against it. Spending that money would put me in payback-land for the next three or four years and would counter my ability to move up in life by getting a place of my own, finding/making a real career, and regaining some or all of that independence I had and loved during my University years. However, it would allow me to go really fast.

But speed comes at a price, nowadays, and that price for me was my beloved Batmobile; the tumbler, the lex, optimus prime... my 1994 black Lexus ES300:


First of all, that isn't exactly my car; it's the type of car that I own, but this exact car must belong to someone in Europe based on the plates. Second, that isn't my house in the background either - and if that's where I'll end up if I save my money and keep this car, then I may just go buy the Z.

Anyhow, this was a fairly big sidebar so I'd better tighten things up here real quick. I wanted the Z. I didn't and am not going to buy the Z. Instead I am saving this money, making a real push at getting myself oriented properly for a career in screenwriting/the entertainment industry, and am working on simply establishing myself in every sense of the word.

So I get up Tuesday, grab my fat-ass, Costanza-esque wallet and decide I need to go two places: the bank, and the 'licky-bo'.

I'm now driving. For whatever reason I decide I will go to the bank first. It's further from my house, but the LCBO can be done on the way home, I figure, so that's how it happened. I get to the bank, wait in line patiently though rather uncomfortably (the old, unwashed man behind me was standing just a wee bit too close for comfort), and then make my deposit.

I always love making big deposits there. I'll go in with a wad of cash in an elastic band; sometimes in my plastic batman pencilcase because, let's be honest, it's fairly innocuous, and then approach the teller and drop the cashola bomb right in her face. It's something like this:


TELLER #1: I can help you down here.
ME: (approaching teller) Well, I'd just like to make a deposit today (reaching into pockets).
TELLER #1: Okay then (waiting for my piggy bank).
ME: (pulls out a stack of cash the size of a well-read dictionary and overhand slaps it onto the counter) There ya be.
TELLER #1: (A surprised, somewhat alarmed look, then calm, taking the money to count it. As she counts she looks either way, then calmly, under her breath says) Crack......?
ME: (leaning in) I'm sorry, what?
TELLER #1: (coughing, then whispering) Can I buy some crack?
ME: (surprised) What? No! I'm a bartender, not a crack dealer.
TELLER #1: (whispering, disappointed) Damn, I love sniffing crack.
ME: (after a short pause) You're talking about the drug right?


So I make my deposit and head on down to the liquor store. This is where things get a little messy.

I walk in, walk to the back, then pick up, pay for and walk out of the building with an eight-pack of various imported tall cans, and head back to my car. Because I like to wear light-weight 'board-shorts', I often sacrifice the use of my pockets for not exposing the top half of my ass in public, and so I'm holding my wallet, my cell phone, my keys, an eight-pack of tall cans, and a four-pack of vodka coolers. I decide that, at this moment, I need the keys more than the wallet so I reach up, dropping wallet onto the top of my car, and then back down, unlocking the car so I can get my shit together without dropping it all over the parking lot and looking like a tool.

I can see, now, that you're nodding; but not because you think I'm a tool. You can see where this is going, I'm sure, and if you're not off the shitter or are still in a compromising position, Europe, you're just going to have to hang on for a little bit longer.

I unlock the car, put my booze in the back seat, and then get in, start the engine, and drive off on my merry way as my worn leather wallet clings to the outside roof just above me for dear wallet-life.

Now, all this was well and good for me until 45 minutes later. Suddenly, as I'm driving to work, I feel the urge to check and see that I acutally have the license for the motor vehicle that I'm currently driving and, much to my dismay, find that it's not in the car; nor is my wallet. Cue mental backpedaling.

After I'd finished rewinding my mind and realized that I'd probably left my wallet on the top of my car at the LCBO (but just after I'd safely deposited the $700 that was in it only minutes earlier) I called home and had everyone check high and low for it.


ME: Did you check the desk?
FAMILY MEMBER: Yes.
ME: Did you check the end of my bed?
FAMILY MEMBER: Yes.
ME: Did you check the fridge?
FAMILY MEMBER: .................... yes.


No sooner than I get my American Express, VISA and bank cards canceled, someone shows up at my house with my wallet, drops it off, and refuses to give a last name or address because they just wanted to do the right thing, not find a reward for it.

I know! Unbelievable. Perhaps this is the thanks I get from my car for deciding to keep it around.

Then again, if it was a choice between keeping ol' Optimus around or putting him in a compromising position, it's an easy decision.

Too bad I can't say the same for Europe.