2003-09-12 - 9:15 a.m.

Okay, this is *hilarious*:

Two nights ago, there was this pickup truck stalled next to our house. This is no big thing. There are often cars and trucks stalled next to our house, usually in the bus lane. Idiots. Anyway, this truck was not blocking the bus lane, but it was blocking the one-way street next to our house, which isn't so bad as about five people per day use that road.

They tried to jump the battery, but that didn't work, so they called a tow truck. I didn't sit there and watch the tow truck hook up the car, because I was watching something on the television, but the whole activity was taking place just outside our window, so it was kind of hard to miss.

This is the funny part: We were watching whatever we were watching and heard a crash, a very stereotypical "car crashing into something" noise, followed by the annoying (and all too frequent) sound of a car alarm. You've probably guessed what happened, and you're probably right: the tow truck had *dropped* the truck down the incline where it crashed into a parked car. Pure slapstick. The timing was perfect.

Later on, as we were walking to the grocery store, we passed the car-crashed-into and saw some guy yelling into his cellphone in an unplaceable language, possibly Basque. There was a bit of a smear on the bumper and the license plate was nicely crinkled, but otherwise the car was fine. Though that's the first instance I've known of where the car alarm actually alerted the owner that something bad was happening to his car.

I wonder how much trouble the tow-truck guy got into?