Well, it finally happened. I got raped in Detroit.

Well, not literally, but monetarily.

The day did not start off well, with my alarm jarring me to consciousness at 8am after only four hours of sleep due to some Gears of War induced sleep deprivation, and even after that the cessation of GoW I had some trouble because of a certain Ghost haunting me for a bit. But I forced myself out of bed, because I needed to get down to Joe Louis Arena to get my Red Wings tickets. When I finally got out of bed about half an hour after waking up I ate breakfast real quick and then got ready for the trek down to D-Town (I promise not to call it that again, I just wanted something to rhyme there). I called Jasmine and Kyle to wake them up and then my brother and I left to pick them up before heading to Detroit.

The drive there wasn’t bad, although my car didn’t much appreciate the extra bodies in it. When we got off the freeway and into the city we passed by the notorious Fist Statue, and as we did I made a remark about its symbolism for your potential to get, well, fisted in the city. Little did I know that this wasn’t a joke, but a prophesy. I was worried that there may be an excess of traffic due to the auto show, but there was surprisingly little. However, I did discover that there was a dozen or so WWE semi trucks parked along the side street that I usually park on when I go to get tickets from JLA. The alternative to parking in the street was to pay $10 at a lot across the street. I decided that I didn’t want to pay $10 to park so that I could purchase $9 hockey tickets, so, even though there were only a couple other cars parked in the street besides the semis, I decided to park in the street. Wow, did that turn out to be a terrible (and kind of ironic) decision.

At this point, it was about 9:45, and the box office didn’t open until 10, so we waited in line, outside in the cold. There were surprisingly few people there, considering the turnout the other times I’ve done this, but I was just happy that I wouldn’t have to wait as long. At 10 the doors opened and we got inside, but ended up waiting in line for another 45 minutes anyway because all of the ticket windows were moving incredibly slow, ours in particular. When we finally did get our tickets I was just relieved that I was able to get them for all the games we wanted and, with tickets in hand, we headed back to my car.

We parked a little ways down the street, but as we were walking I became very apparent of a startling lack of my car. I requested confirmation from everyone else that my car was no longer occupying the physical space where we left it. Devastatingly, they all agreed. At first I considered that it may have been stolen, but it wasn’t very likely, considering it was in plain sight and there were quite a few people around the area… including a few police cars, which led me to the next option; it had been towed.

We continued walking down the street, hoping to find it inexplicably, but safely, moved a couple hundred yards down the street. My wishes almost came true; it had been safely moved down the street, but it was very obvious how it had gotten there, as we found it atop a tow truck. As we approached, the driver of the tow truck was attaching a second car to the back of his truck and I informed him that it was my car that he had. A police officer approached contemporaneously and told me that I would have to pay the driver whatever he requested to get my car down, at which point I was told that it would cost $75 cash. Unfortunately, we only had about half that on us collectively, so Kyle ran inside Cobo Arena to go to an ATM as I tried to think of an alternative. The only one offered to me by the police officer was to pay with a credit card at the impound, which would be significantly more expensive.

At this point, I was pretty much proper fucked. Kyle was taking a while inside, but the guy started to take my car down. Thankfully he was pretty cool (or, more likely, greedy) and said that he would drop the car for $20 cash and we’d be straight, so I gave him the money and we had my car back. Unfortunately, that was when I noticed the ticket on the windshield, which is going to run another $30, but it still could have been a hell of a lot worse. Apparently if I pay within 10 days then there’s also a $10 reduction to the fine, so that should only cost me $20.

After we got my car back we made our way back to the highway, passing the iconic Fist, which I’ve come to realize is more of a warning than a decoration. Take my advice, and heed its waning.

Does anyone else have any fun law-related stories? Feel free to share them by leaving a comment. Or something. Is there anybody out there? Can anyone even hear me?