My car died on the highway on my homeward commute the other night. The dashboard clock went too dim to read, and then the interior lights and instruments started flashing on and off while the engine stalled and caught and stalled again. I dropped it into neutral and coasted to the right. I made it all the way to the right side of the frontage road, for which I’m grateful. Maybe I’ve mentioned it here before, but I’m generally a very lucky guy.
I found in my wallet the roadside assistance card from my insurance company and called for a tow. They told me to expect about an hour. I lifted the hood to communicate that mine was a disabled vehicle and sat down in the shade nearby. I got honked at a lot, and several people made hand gestures that I took to mean, “Turn your hazards on, idiot!” I wasn’t sure what gesture to use for, “I have no electrical power, asshole!” A flatbed truck pulled up in front of my car 20 minutes later.
I gave the driver the keys, and he started hooking it up. He seemed to be looking at me a little sideways while he worked, like maybe he was taking the temperature on my mood. I said, “You must see a lot of mad people, huh?”
He laughed. “Yes, some.”
“Must be weird having a job where most people you meet are having a really bad day.”
He didn’t answer, and I wondered if our clearly differing native languages would make the chit chat difficult. I do enjoy the chit chat.
Once he had the car on the truck, we both got in the cab. We checked our phones. I got a text that advised me that the tow truck would arrive in about 20 minutes, and I wondered if I’d been scooped up by a rival tow company. But he never asked me where I was going or for payment, so I felt confident he was the right guy. We started off.
Perhaps sensing my suspicion, he said, “You’re very trusting. Women are always scared. They say, ‘Who are you? Where you from?’ They want to see ID. They don’t get in the truck right away. They say, ‘They told me you’d be here in an hour.’ I say, ‘OK, I’ll leave and come back in an hour.’ Then they get in the truck.”
We drove on in silence while I contemplated my trusting nature, and the privilege that makes it possible for me to be trusting.
“Yes,” he said. “Mad people. Bad days. But I don’t mind. Last week, I was sitting in the truck, not doing anything, waiting for a call, and a guy comes up to me and starts yelling in the window. ‘You towed my car! You towed my car! I was in a parking lot yesterday, and you towed my car, you bastard!’ I said, ‘It wasn’t me! We don’t do that, we only do insurance calls. People think a tow truck can do anything, but it’s different licenses. We do insurance. My friends call me up and say, ‘Someone parked in my spot; you come tow them.’ It doesn’t work like that. I can’t!”
“Yeah, I bet if you’re the tow truck driver, you’re always the bad guy.” We sat silently and contemplated the human tendency to judge quickly based on little or no information.
“You live out here?” he asked after a moment. “You drive every day?”
“Yes, I work downtown. I drive an hour each way.”
“Why you live here and work there?”
“Housing is cheaper out here.”
“Yes, but you spend the same money driving!”
“That’s true. But my son is out here. I’m divorced. We share custody. If I lived there, I’d still be driving out here for my son, so it’s all the same.”
“Oh. You move. You take him with you.”
“It doesn’t work like that. You have kids?”
Here he laughed, with genuine mirth. “No, no kids. No wife. No time!”
“Oh, you drive a tow truck all the time?”
“This is one job. I have 3 jobs. I’m trying to find 4th job. I used to Uber, but I got tired of people in my own car. Everybody’s drunk. At least this isn’t my own truck.”
“4 jobs! When do you sleep?”
“3 hours, 4 hours. That’s plenty for sleep.”
“No time for girlfriends?”
Again, he laughed at my funny joke. “No, you have to find the right woman. It’s hard. Women say, ‘You have no time! You choose no time for me!’ I say, ‘I have 3 jobs! I have no time for me either!’”
“You’re never going to get married? What does your mom think of that?”
“I’m 25. I’ll get married when I’m 40. I’ll save my money now and get married later. I tell my mother that. She says, ‘You’re an animal! You have no feelings!’” He laughed again. He had light eyes and dark hair. He looked younger when he smiled. “How much does it cost to get married here? $700?”
“Oh, you can probably do it cheaper than that.”
“Where I come from… I’m from Jerusalem. Palestine. To get married there, it costs $150,000. $200,000. Here, it’s not so much. There, the wedding goes on and on and on, feeding people, giving them gifts. You have to give everyone gifts. Not just the bride. Not just the bride’s family, the mother, the sisters. 300 grams of gold, everyone!”
“300 grams?!” I didn’t want to admit I had no idea how much 300 grams of gold was. “That’s crazy. How does anybody ever afford to get married? Everybody’s single there?”
“No, you just have to wait and work very hard. This is why you find the right woman. You get one chance. To get divorced costs even more money than to get married! No one gets divorced. No one can afford it. Everybody here gets married. And everybody here gets divorced.”
“Yeah. I got married when I was 23. It didn’t work out so well. But I didn’t have to give anybody any gold!”
We sat in friendly silence again and looked at the traffic. He was a kind driver. He constantly let people in front of him. After a moment, he advised me, “You should get a bike, you drive all this way all the time.”
“A bike?! I’m not pedaling all that way twice a day, every day. Especially in 100-degree heat all summer! Although I would be a lot skinnier then.”
“No, not that bike! A motorcycle. Not that bike. You should get a motorcycle. You ever ride?”
“No, I don’t trust other people’s driving enough to ride a motorcycle.”
“But it’s fun.”
“My brother-in-law had a motorcycle.”
“What kind?”
“I don’t know. He got bumped from behind on the highway and wiped out. He crushed his knee between the road and the gas tank. It took him a long time just to walk again. I don’t need that in my life.”
“Yes,” he said. “But it’s fun.”
Not long after, we arrived at the repair shop, and he maneuvered that truck with skill and confidence. I’ve never been confident in large vehicles, especially backing up. I am not a “back a pickup into a parking space” kind of guy. But he was deft. He got the car off the flatbed and climbed back into the cab. “I drive you?” he asked.
“No, thanks. My girlfriend’s coming to pick me up. I appreciate it though.”
“Your girlfriend!” he said, and smiled wide. “That’s good. She comes to help. That’s good. She is a good woman! You get married again! But you don’t get divorced!” And he drove off into the world to help the angry people having bad days.
