For starters, I wouldn't recommend walking into the office, and by office I mean a trailer with two cardboard ramps leading into the doors, and exclaiming "So this is what hell looks like." The two large men behind the bullet proof glass didn't find it very comical. They also didn't find it humorous when I said, "So which one of you are Satan?"
Initially, Chris was just going to pick up the car after work since I had class at Second City. But once he got there he was informed (by Satan's assistant) that because his name wasn't on the registration he couldn't get it out. See when we moved to Chicago we sold Chris's pretty car and kept my reliable Camry instead. But don't bring this up to Chris, he still misses his car every day, even though I tell him all the time Camry is now our car. But that's beside point.
After class I jumped in a cab to meet Chris at Columbus and Wacker. Here's the thing about Wacker street, there's a Wacker, a middle Wacker, a lower Wacker, and then there's hell. Guess where the impound lot is? Most people don't realize the city has multilevel streets on account of the fact they elevated it to be above the water long long ago. A good rule of thumb is if you don't have red eyes and don't feed on flesh, try not to go below anything middle level. Especially after dusk... So last night as my cabby was rolling deeper and deeper into the tunnels of lower Chicago I'll pretend I didn't start to get a little nervous as I looked around and could start to see the glowing eyes peer back at me from every dark corner. It didn't help that my phone had 5% battery. In hindsight, that probably wasn't the best time to try to Instagram a selfie from the backseat with the caption "Worst Night Ever! #mondays! #OOTD"
Anyway, Mr. Cab Man got as close to the impound lot as he felt comfortable before he slowed the car a bit and insisted I just tuck and roll. Chris was supposed to be waiting for me, but of course he was nowhere in sight because he's not an idiot and he was waiting on middle Wacker with the rest of normal living society.
To get into the actual impound office I had to pass two security guards, walk up a ramp, knock three times, go down a slide, solve a riddle, and kill a troll. And once inside I was finally able to meet with the devil who stole my car. The devil in the blue Bears jersey. I'll spare you the details of my interaction at this point, but let's just say it was as smooth as interacting with the DMV's inbred cousin who refused to make eye contact.
The real icing on the cake came when I finally got to my car and saw a small piece of the front bumper was hanging low, to the point of actually touching the ground. When I pulled my car around toward the exit it sounded like I was dragging a metal body on stilts.
I stormed into the office, and by this time there was a line of about ten other pour souls always waiting to hear their fate, and the guard told me I had to wait. I had to wait because "I got out of line." If ever there was a time for someone to make a gif of me it would have been last night when I was told I had to wait before I could talk to someone about the fact they had messed up my car. I mean our car. I went a little nutso.
Because I am clearly too emotionally attached to this event at this time I will wrap it up by saying the impound man simply looked at my car, shrugged, and said "yeah this happens sometimes." He told me if I want Chicago to fix my car I have to go and get three different estimates and then go file a claim at City Hall. Do you know what city hall is like in the third largest city in America? It's like walking through a spider web over and over and over.
Wish me luck for a better Tuesday.
