Grandsons Patrick and Kyle are both in theater tech at the School for Creative and Performing Arts, so attendance at the Aronoff performance of The Musical: Miracle on 34th St was mandatory – to hear about what parts of the set they had helped to build.
We pulled into the parking lot that runs along 7th from Main to Sycamore. Where normally $5 goes into the machine which spits out a ticket, there was a man collecting the $5 (as had always been the custom until very recently), and giving a printed bit of cardboard to place on the dash.
All seemed ordinary, until we came back to the car to find a ‘ticket’ from the parking lot, that we had not paid. Whereupon another man came up, took the ticket, said he’d deal with it, and I gave him another $5. Didn’t seem quite right, but what the heck.
I kept meaning to call the parking lot company – which meant stopping and looking at the ticket machine for a phone number.
Didn’t get that done, and on Saturday, a letter from a collection agency arrived in the mail, asking for the $60 I owed them for non-payment. I managed to call their Seattle number when they were open today, and given the options, chose to punch 2 to dispute the debt.
I told the woman who answered that I really wasn’t disputing it, but just wanted to tell my sad little story. Lo and Behold, when I finished – she voided the letter, and will send me another letter confirming that! An unexpected and terrific outcome.