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With the coming of spring weather AAA member's expectations get higher and their threshold of patience lower. Our calltakers, dispatchers, and tow truck drivers all get cursed at occasionally but it's rare when I get it twice in the same night. The first one was directed full bore at me and with great vindictiveness. The other was an accident and gave me a chance to play Cupid.

This occurred last week Wednesday or Thursday I think. I've just finished 11 nights in a row and feeling punchy.

It was a routine tow from a repair place with the lady member waiting for us at her home about two to three miles away. Nothing special to earn an unfavorable character assessment from an admiring public but that was about 15 minutes into my future.

The car had been towed to this repair place on February 15th and for one reason or another the member was done with them and wanted it brought home. Any bills owed to said facility were paid and the keys were in the vehicle probably under the mat or in the ashtray. Routine to the point of boredom. All might have gone well except there were three factors the member didn't count on.

1. A mechanic with a big mouth.

2. A tow driver who is a stickler for legality.

3. A dispatcher (me) who is a stiff necked Pharisee at heart with a sinners MUST be punished for character building purposes attitude. It really does hurt me more then you ho ho ho.

My driver arrives on scene and immediately declares there is a problem. Translation: I've discovered a loophole to where I won't have to tow the vehicle and AAA still has to pay me and I can go somewhere else and make some real money.

The back plate is missing. My antenna goes up. But a sense of decorum stops my rush to judgement and I enquire if the front plate is there since I'm driving a truck with Alabama plates in back and none in front until I switch to Ohio in June for Litnetters who think it's cool to send me Batman comics for my birthday that month.

My lazy driver huff and puffs and announces he'll have to get out and see since the vehicle is pulled in. I weep for his efforts and vow to be gentle in this great ordeal.

The front plate has no sticker.

I experience another bout of brain deadness as I consider this new data trying to make sense out of it.

Finally the anvil hits the head and enlightment strikes. No sticker for this current year.

Aha invalid plates!!!! And my club is finally cracking down on towing vehicles without proper tags and registration.

I start to make the first of two phone calls to my errant lady member. She is polite and concerned about the missing plate sticker.

But she overkills it by informing me with almost a stage voice that she was too honest to send us to an improperly liscensed vehicle or words to that effect. The word honest was definitely used and I truly wish I could remember her precise wording but years of being kicked by harpies has taught me a thing or two. Or simply put--thou protesteth too much. Something is up. I hem and haul around and she asks if the driver would check the registration. I agree to ask and tell her I'll call her back.

To my great surprise and probably to inspire even more guilt at overworking him the driver actually checks the glove compartment for the registration just in case knowing I like the full weight of being right on my side when I deny service. He finds last years paperwork with a temporary tag noted.

At this point the mechanic makes his contribution to the Trials of Ms. Veracity. He shares with the driver that said car should really be adding color to a scrap yard and the lady and boyfriend in question had bought a van and he was pretty sure they took the plate off the car and put it on the new van. This information is quickly relayed to me and my decision is immediate and firm. Bye bye. My driver's grin can be sensed thru the radio waves as I reach for the phone.

Ms. Veracity is a bit out of breath as she says she can be down to the repair pakce with the proper registration and sticker in ten minutes if I could just have the tow driver wait for her.

I inform her I already dismissed him because the plates were not valid and I should add at this point our calltakers are supposed to put that in each call they take before it hits my dispatch screen.

There is a hiss and then a perfectly concise summation of my character was rendered. Loudly.

"YOU F---G BAST---D"

I remember thinking if you only knew as my sins do seem to be ever before me these days and God's methods of throwing light on sins and failures is astonishing sometimes.

I hung up on her.

IF and I say IF her registration was good I would have had to pay the driver TWICE for the time spent waiting for her and if she still couldn't provide proper documenation that would be more money being wasted needlessly. I would even have let her leave the paperwork on the seat and the real time delay would have been very slight at that time. But Nooooooo she had to vent her spleen and it got her nowhere.

The car is still on the repair lot at least the day after and not a word on cruel and heartless dispatchers persecuting honest and upright ladies has been reported to management. I dodge more bullets it seems.

Hey guess what--Part one of two--but part two will be shorter.