I’ve been drinking and I’d like to tell you guys a story. Sorry it’s so long.

Jul 19, 2021, 3:28 AM

I’d like to tell you folks a story. Occasionally, I like to sit back drink a few beers and let my memory do the walking. Today I saw a news story about the Atlanta Falcons kicker getting his car stolen. Like an old smell, this story drifted back to my mind. I was fairly newly married. I loved my wife and I knew, in my immature mind that I needed to earn a decent days wages, to provide for my lady. So I got sold on a job. One of those sales jobs that makes you feel under qualified for a job that everybody is actually over qualified for. So I traveled to Atlanta for corporate sales classes after I got licensed to sale insurance. In Atlanta they kept me up in the most mid grade hotel they could find. For me, it was pure elegance. The free continental was legit. All the bagels I could eat. Plus all the condiments I could steal. Bag lunch came free at the classes of course. That’s how I really knew this job was legit. Anyways, I parked my 1989 Oldsmobile Cutlass Cierra outside the hotel, checked in, and slept with pride. After waking in the morning, devouring a self cooked waffle and stealing an extra bagel from the continental breakfast, I went to my car to drive to training. Only my car wasn’t where I left it. It was gone. In its place, a few pieces of broken glass. Undeterred, I decided to walk the perimeter of the hotel. Besides, maybe I was confused about which entrance I had used. I walked almost entirely around the facility, when I saw my old beauty sitting right there waiting for me. For a moment, I thought I had actually gotten confused about where I had parked. But as I approached, I noticed my driver’s side door was slightly open. And beside my car, more broken glass. As I climbed in, I noticed the broken glass in the backseat. Driver’s side back window was smashed out, car had been moved, and my steering column was definitely cracked. I was stunned. I decided to storm in and tell the hotel staff that my car had been broken into. As I walked in I heard this guy yelling at the front desk that his Jeep had been stolen and how they had left their old broken down Oldsmobile beside his vehicle. I immediately realized what had really happened. I walked up to the counter and told everybody, “If you think that guy has it bad? Somebody stole my crappy car last night, but when they realized I didn’t have enough gas in the tank to go anywhere. They parked it and stole that guys Jeep.” The staff laughed. But then I explained that I really couldn’t crank my car and I didn’t know how I was going to get home. (I used to roll with collision coverage only.) That’s when the fine gentlemen who drove the shuttle said that he knew how to crank it with a screw driver. We couldn’t find a screw driver so we used a butter knife. I was so dumb back then, that I still attended the classes for that stupid insurance sales scam. Took the shuttle every day. Cranked my car with a butter knife when it was all over with and drove home, full of a lack of confidence. I spent one day field training how to sell scam insurance. I quit a few hours in, even though I had been top of the class in Atlanta. They didn’t beg me to stay. Worked hard the next few years and always kept that butter knife out of view from the windows. But everyday that I climbed into that 1989 Oldsmobile, with the taped up back window, and cranked that bad boy up, like a freaking champ, with that butter knife… I never forgot where I came from and how I got there. I don’t know if I can crank a car up today with a butter knife. But I used to take pride in the fact that I could crank it up as fast with a butter knife as a normal could with a key. Sometimes, I miss the bad old days. Wish I could land right in the middle sometimes and just tell that dumb kid that everything is going to be alright and you’re gonna make it. Until you don’t make it of course. Maybe he’d slow down a minute and look around at what really matters. But then again, maybe he’d get in even more of a hurry and rush the crap out of things, so who knows.

TLDR: I’m drunk and remembered when my car got stolen in Atlanta. And I cranked my car with a butter knife for a long time to follow.

PS: Cobb county police reached out to me a couple years later about coming to court as a witness in the car theft ring. I declined. Gas was too expensive. Plus, I’d gained more than I lost on that one.

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