Number eight

I knew I forgot something off yesterday's list.

We had a little excitement here last week. One morning--I forget which--I looked out and saw a car parked in our parking spot. This irritated me. Why? Because it's our spot, and every so often one of our neighbors thinks, well heck, they don't have a car, why am I parking on the street? and parks in our spot. This ticks me off because a) it's our spot, b) the least you could do is ask, and c) we do use our spot, because our babysitter parks in it every day. So when I saw this car, I grumbled and decided to wait and see if it moved. It didn't. It was still there that afternoon, and that night, and the next morning.

So I got a piece of red construction paper from Barak's arts and crafts box, took a very thick black Sharpie, and wrote MOVE YOUR CAR on it. I stuck the sign under the windshield wiper and went to work.

When I got home, there was the car, still, sign untouched. So I asked the neighbors if it was their car. They said no. Fine, said I, and called the towing company. The towing company told me that they couldn't just tow the car without a ticket, so I should call the police, tell them that the car was parked on private property without permission, and ask them to ticket it. Which I did.

An hour or so later, MHH came home. I had to talk to the upstairs neighbors about something (paying Mr. Fixit for a repair to the front door) and left him with Barak. Ten minutes later, MHH came upstairs. Without Barak.

"I think you should come downstairs now," he said.

First things first. "Where's Barak?!"

"He's fine. The policeman is reading him a pop-up book."

Indeed the policeman was. Because he wanted to talk to us a little bit more about the car, because not only did the car not belong to any neighbors, but the car had been reported stolen a couple days earlier by someone whom the very nice policeman described as a "shady character." The car had, it appeared, had its lock broken. And been hotwired. And been abandoned in our very parking spot.

Goodness. So I told him what I knew--basically that the car showed up overnight--and he and his buddy went out and did policeman things to it, and shined flashlights on it, and then along came the policeman tow truck and away went the car and that was the end of that.