Another quick story

The other day I was driving past a gas station and was flagged down by a guy who said a lady's car was on fire. I thought, why is he telling me this? I'm not a fireman, but okay, I do have a radio to the police station.

So, I pull around and into the station and a guy there (a young guy who I used to work with at a previous job, by the way) told me that a couple of them pushed the lady's car away from the pumps and sure enough, it was now blocking the sidewalk so nobody could walk by!

As it turned out, the lady was deaf. When I asked her what had happened, I had to use a combination of charades (which I'm very good at) and writing things on my pad of paper. She was typing responses to me on her phone which was so slow and maddening, that she just grabbed my pad and pen and starting writing furiously.

The car was not burning. What happened was, she had had a repair recently and the mechanic, if you can call him that, used blue tape - yes, blue painter's masking tape! - to wrap some wires together. Well, the tape was resting on a hot part of the engine, and amazingly, it caught fire! She was fine, the car was fine except that she lost the fan that cools the radiator. She told me she thought she could make it home (she lived about 4 miles away), so I had the Desk cancel the cops and the firemen and let her drive off. I hope she made it. I never found out one way or another.

These are the kinds of things that happen when you're out in the street all day. What fun!

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