The Repo Man

Sometimes, the ironies of life almost make me believe there is a superintending providence. Almost. But if there is, s/he has a sick sense of humor.

In addition to being a musician and a writer, I work in a music store. It's a pretty good straight job, all things considered, and most days I don't mind it too much. It pays some of the bills. And at least I'm looking at instruments all day.

It's a small shop, literally a mom and pop store. We do a lot of business with school bands and orchestras, especially our rent-to-own program for families to purchase an instrument to play in school. Instruments cost a lot. A decent trumpet is about $900 retail. Saxophones are around $2000, depending on the brand.

We run these rental programs in the schools and families fill out an application with us, we run a credit check, and then they make monthly payments. For the most part, this is a win-win. The store has been in business for over 35 years and unlike the big-box music stores, they've never declared bankruptcy.

I spend a couple days a week on the road, visiting schools, checking in on teachers, seeing if they need anything.

One of the things I do in connection with this is repossession of instruments.

If you are already familiar with my most read post, you'll already sense the irony.

Yeah, so when families fall behind on their payments, I'm the guy who comes and takes their kid's clarinet from them.

It sucks. It's the part of my job I hate the most and I've not done it particularly well in the past. My boss will sometimes say something to me about it. "Need to be working on collections! We can't let those get out of hand." Because honestly, I don't collect after two or three months of delinquency. It's usually nine or ten months. Sometimes it's a year or more.

Then last month, I suppose sensing how distasteful this part of the gig was to me and the other salesmen, the boss came downstairs and announced, "I'm giving $30 for every repossession you do!"

It changes things, doesn't it? I mean, it's the difference between your kid playing in the band and my kid taking gymnastics. Or maybe if I repossess enough trombones this month, I won't have my own van repossessed again.

It's like a bum fight on YouTube.

So like the fellow says, "I ain't gay, but $30 is $30."

I've become the most active repo man in the shop. I've been working overtime, too, usually about nine hours a day, six days a week. Today was supposed to be my day off, but I worked just so I could do collections. "Collections." Like we're selecting stamps. It's a nice euphemism.

The work itself is kind of interesting. You spend a lot of time tracking people down. It feels like being a P.I. or something. You are looking through old contracts, contacting the next of kin, calling their workplace, pretending to be asking a question about your transmission or pet grooming or whatever. Or look on Facebook. People will switch telephone numbers to avoid creditors, but almost no one deactivates Facebook.

The easy ones happen at the school. The family gets behind and you go to the kid's teacher. I have one of those today.

I had stopped by last week to collect and the teacher told me it was his best player, really nice kid. I told him I'd called, sent letters. The family was two years behind on payments. I could get fired if I let that go. The teacher asked me to sell him a cheap saxophone so he could give it to her to play. We usually give 30% off to schools. I gave him 45%. He doesn't have the budget for it, but I guess the kids will sell more pizza kits or something to pay for it.

So today I stopped by again. "Hey, man. I really need that saxophone. I'm going to get in trouble if I don't collect it."

"Can you just give me till Friday? I'm going to call the mom again. The girl doesn't know. She's going to cry when it gets taken."

That's me. Stealing kids' dream at $30 a pop.

The harder ones, or maybe "trickier" ones, are when the kid quits playing or the family moves. Then you have to go knock on doors.

"I've never heard of him. We just moved in four months ago."

"That bitch moved out with her kid last year. If you find her, let me know."

"We don't have the trumpet anymore."

That was my day today, plugging in addresses in my GPS, reading directions to houses from old contracts, knocking on doors. Some of the houses weren't there anymore. A lot of them have "No Trespassing" and "Beware of Dog" signs.

I knocked on one house today. The woman answered and I explained who I was. She said she'd get the instrument. Her son wasn't playing it anymore.

She came back a few minutes later. "I'm really sorry. I just couldn't afford to pay anymore. I lost my job."

"It's okay. I understand. I had my car repossessed last month. Times are hard right now."

It's left me in a mood I'd rather not be in.

I used to not understand my dad. When he would come home, he wanted everyone to be happy. He would get really pissed off if anyone was complaining or arguing or anything. I kind of understand it now.

You do these things, sometimes shitty things, to take care of your family. And you want to imagine that they make a difference, that everyone will be okay because you decided to take this path.

Only, you don't give a shit if you are seven, because you just want to watch "Monster High" for another 23 minutes and you're probably going to cry if someone doesn't let you.

I sat down at dinner tonight and the eleven-year-old asked, "So, how was your day?"

I tried to explain that it was kind of lousy and started explaining repossession to him, but then I decided that the less he knew about that for now, the better.

After dinner, the Goddess bathed the kids and put them to bed, giving me time to write. I've got a magazine article due in the morning and at twenty cents a word, I'll need that to pay the bills this month, too.

It was pretty easy going, so I wrapped it up quickly. I went to check on the Goddess and she was asleep with the Monkey in our bed. She says it's bad sleep hygiene, but most nights, he won't fall asleep in his own bed. And truth be told, I sleep better with him there, too.

Then I stepped outside and talked to my neighbor Crystal, who smokes behind her house so her kids won't catch her. We talked about the neighborhood, about the shootings that have been going on, about heroin and the homeless people down in the tent city. She said it was good we lived one block up the hill instead of "on the flats," where most of the shootings were. We talked about how much childcare was costing us and she told me to let the Goddess know if she was still looking for a job.

Then I took my car to the gas station at the foot of the hill. A young blonde in a super short skirt and stilettos came up and asked me if I could "help her out." She said she'd make it worth my while. I told her I was married, but honestly, I couldn't imagine having such sad sex anyway. Besides, I'm too broke to afford it.

The guys online, waiting to pay while the cashier stood behind the bullet-proof glass were talking about jobs. One of them said that they were hiring housekeepers at the hospital. "All you gotta do is stay clean 30 days." "Count me out then," said another.

It's a hard life. But part of me wonders what kind of father raises his kids in a place like this. And what kind of man does the things I have to do to make a few extra bucks for bills.

Oh, well. It's late. I need to crawl in bed with the Monkey and hope sleep comes quickly. I've got another full day of collections tomorrow.

Homeless

Being a parent makes you really emotional about current events.

A couple weeks ago, while I was at work, something came across my Facebook feed. It was a news item that our city's mayor had decided to dismantle the "tent city" where 30-40 homeless people live on my side of town. This decision came one day after an article in the newspaper about how people were helping the homeless and also during the coldest week we've had this winter, when temperatures have plummeted into the single digits.

The mayor justified the decision saying that there were plenty of places for the homeless to go and he didn't want any of them to freeze to death. So at 2:00 in the afternoon, with no advance announcement, city workers dismantled the makeshift camp and seized what property the homeless were unable to take with them.

I've never been homeless. I have, however, had friends who became homeless stay with me for short periods. The mayor and his supporters say, "The homeless can go to a shelter." This may be true, but there are very legitimate reasons why they may not want to. According to the mayor, those who don't want to go to a shelter don't want to follow the rules and just want to drink all day.

A lot of the homeless have mental health issues, problems with addiction, or a criminal history. The problem with mental illness, of course, is that those who truly suffer from it are the least likely to seek help unless they have a support system in place. Many shelters refuse to take addicts unless they are clean for a given period of time, which is easier said than done. And if one has a criminal history, well, you just do. There's no way to correct that, and even if you've served your time, some shelters won't take you.

Most shelters also take only men or women, not both. When my friend Charles became suddenly homeless, I learned about all the problems this creates.

Charles' wife went to a church-run shelter, along with their two children. Like most shelters of this sort, they had strict rules about drinking and curfews. She had a job at the time and he didn't, partly because he is an "undocumented alien." They are married and she is a a U.S. citizen, so automatic green card, right? Well, no, because it takes a lot of money to go through that process, money Charles and his wife didn't have. So now he isn't able to keep a job, which is part of the reason they were homeless.

Charles was staying with me. The thing was though, he had to pick the kids up from the shelter, which was a couple miles outside of town, so that his wife could go to work. And she, of course, had to find transportation to and from work. This wasn't so bad before they lost their home, because they lived close to her job. It was significantly more difficult once she was staying in the shelter.

So Charles would have to go get the kids and then find somewhere to spend the day with them. They stayed at my house a bit, or he took them to the library or museum. Then he'd have to arrange transportation to get them back to mom at the shelter before curfew, when they had Bible study. Charles and his family are atheists, but you surrender your freedom of conscience and religion when  you become homeless in America. In fact, you lose more rights than if you were a criminal.

Lots of homeless people, especially those without children, just opt to brave the streets. Some homeless say that the shelters are often places of physical danger from others. They feel like they lose their safety, autonomy, and dignity. Then there are all the little things. If you don't have proper identification, you can't stay at a shelter. If you can't make curfew, you can't stay there (precluding you from taking certain kinds of employment).

Listening to my coworkers, listening to the radio, it's easy to believe that the homeless are a problem rather than people. I guess it's just too easy for me to see myself in that situation for me to respond that way. Losing the van a few weeks ago made our lives really difficult. Struggling with how we are going to pay for daycare, whether the Goddess can find a job that pays enough — it's just really easy to see how normal, working people could lose their home. I can't imagine then also having to deal with addiction or serious mental illness.

I drove home after reading the news about this at work. The temperatures were in the single digits. I had to pick up the seven-year-old from gymnastics.

Completely aside, I hate the other parents at gymnastics. We signed ours up because she needs regular exercise and she loves it, or otherwise I'd never set foot in that place. They have all these chairs and couches where parents sit and watch the girls and all of them are always talking about who is going to make "the team" and who is going on "the trip" that the older kids take. I'm sure they are perfectly decent people, but something about encountering them in that setting and listening to them carry on about which girls are the best makes me want to stab them with a pencil. Also, one of them drives this big stupid Escalade and has almost run me over twice.

The seven-year-old comes off the floor and goes to the dressing room. When she comes out, she's wearing boots, a winter coat, and shorts.

"You're going to freeze," I say.

"I know," she says.

The temps have warmed up since the homeless were in the news. There have been some community meetings, but I guess I'm a bad community member, because I've chosen to spend the time with my family instead.

And working. Lots of overtime, some writing, a post-holiday gig. Anything to make a little more.

Because the thought of my family out there, in the cold, is more than my heart can take.