excerpt from my Offline Journal Of The Damned
Ever since I let WFS Finance Corporation repossess my Chevy Lumina (yes, LET. Insisted, really I had to give them directions to the car's cracktown location TWICE--repomen didn't want to go there), ever since then the collection agency they hired to harass me has been harassing me. Diligently. Imagine that I get a "NO ID" call to my cell phone every night.
Usually I wait until the collection dufus says something snotty and then I scream insults about his feeble job or his dubious heritage and hang up.
Today, I tried a different tac. Before the collection agent could read the snotty script he was given to read to me over the phone, I said:
"I lived in that car 18 months. It was a fine home. Really. Eighteen months living in that car. Parked it under bridges and in public parks. Slept legs in the front seat, torso in the back. Listened to talk radio all day and bummed money for gas at night from strippers. Crapped in construction site port-o-johns. Did my laundry outta the trunk when I had the quarters. I hated to see it go, but when I couldn't pull any more car payments out of my butt and the transmission blew, I called you guys and told you where to come and pick it up. I'm doing good right now just to feed myself. I work part time here and there, some day labor at the manpower halls, but I just can't see where I'll be able to make any kind of payments on the balance in the near future. Or the far future. So let's be real. It's just not gonna happen."
There was a long, long pause on the phone . . . and then my paid tormentor just said:
"Oh . . . . . . Eighteen MONTHS?"
"Yep."
"Where do you . . . uh . . . live now?"
"Wherever."
"Oh . . . Okay . . . Uh . . . Goodbye."
Tags: car repo, ghetto repo, talking to the finance man, talking to the collections agent, collections calls, dunning calls, marquisdejolie, ghetto life, hood life, living in your car
