heigh ho, silver, away

Tuesday, dec. 11, 2007   |   0 comments

Walking with Marco to his car after the Literary Death Match (which went well, I think? aside from the shrieking , booze-swept lady in the audience?):

Marco, limping slightly: So…I have some good news and some bad news.

Evany: Oh boy.

Marco: So the bad news is, the “Check Engine” light came on in your car again.

[This, after the light coming on and the mechanic fixing the car on two separate occasions already.]

Evany: Groaning, stomping noises.

Marco: But the good news is, I got rear-ended today, and your car is totally totaled!

Marco spent the next few weeks calling the rear-ender’s insurance company twenty thousand million times, and after much badgering they finally sent out a claims adjuster, who made an appointment with Marco to come take pictures of the battered car at 11am the next Saturday. When, at 11:15, she still hadn’t arrived, Marco called her cellphone. After a handful of rings, she groggily picked up the phone and hoarsely reported that she’d be about an hour late. When she finally arrived, a bedraggled woman with a Mohawk and a filthy messenger bag moaning about her rough night, Marco politely asked what it was that she’d been doing all night, expecting a long, lurching story filled with bourbon and flat tires and sidewalk brawling and emergency rooms. “Oh, you know…laundry,” she said wearily.

The woman took some photos of the car and told Marco she’d submit her report by Monday…Wednesday at the latest. When we hadn’t heard anything by the end of the week, though, Marco called again and discovered that the insurance company hadn’t heard from the adjuster yet, shrug. Marco called back the next day, shrug, and the next…he started leaving long messages of nothing but the crunching sounds of entire bowls of cereal being consumed. But it wasn’t until we threatened to start billing them for rental cars (nothing lights an ass-fire like consequences, hoo) that they finally, finally scrambled to get the report from the adjuster and finally, finally returned Marco’s calls to report that the car was, indeed, officially totaled. And the very day before the city was scheduled to tow it away, the insurance company came and carted the crushed little Silver Tooth far, far away away.

And then last week the check finally, finally arrived, weighing in at a clean $138 more than I initially paid the car six or whatever months ago. Lemon; lemonade!

Now we just have to get the insane fly-by-night, laundry-tired insurance people to pay for all the time off Marco has had to take off from work to nurse his sad, bruised back, fun. In summary: yay for do-over insurance checks! Pray for Marco’s poor little back! And don’t ever, never let Evany and her faulty mysticism do the deciding when it comes to buying a car.