Smile! You're on Candid Camera!

At least that's what I thought was happening. At any moment I truly believed Peter Funt would step out and tell us to look over there at the hidden camera.

Except he didn't and we weren't. It was just a night of unfortunate follies and a glowing example of Murphy's Law.

My brother and his family flew in for the Thanksgiving holiday on Monday night. I was in charge of driving to the airport to collect them. If you recall from my earlier post from Monday, the weather was unusually warm, which often leads to thunderstorms. Sure enough, a cold front was coming through and the temperature in Kansas City was already 37 degrees. As Murphy's Law would have it, the storms came through exactly as I was leaving the house.

Rain was coming down so hard that I couldn't see and Rock Hill Road was quickly flooding. I pulled over on a side street to wait it out. But this storm could not be waited out. It basically rained in sheets the entire way to the airport.

As I was arriving at the East Terminal, my Mom called to say that their flight was late. The plane couldn't land in the 60 mph winds, so they flew towards Columbia and were circling back behind the storm front. Fine. I decided to park in the garage and head into baggage claim to wait for them. Fast forward about an hour, which is what it took for them to arrive and get their bags, and we were out the door to head home!

Not so much.

After loading up their 5 suitcases, I got in the car and turned the key in the ignition. Nothing. I tried again and again nothing. The lights and everything came on, but there was no sound when it came to the engine turning over.

My brother, thinking that I somehow forgot how to start a car properly, told me to get out and he would start it. Thankfully for my delicate psyche, the car didn't start for him either.

We called my Dad and the new plan was for my parents to call AAA and for my brother to get a rental car for the night so that we could go home. We left all the bags in the car and boarded a Hertz rental car shuttle to take us to the offsite car rental location. As we're on our way, AAA calls me to say that they can't use my parents' AAA account because neither one of them are with the car, so they are going to have to use mine. What? Okay, whatever, as long as we can get home.

Little did we know that it was still going to be another 3 hours until we were actually home.

The AAA dispatch guy told me that they had someone on the way and I needed to meet them at entrance ET2 at arriving flights. Great... but I'm on this shuttle bus. I ended up having to ride the shuttle back to the terminal to run up to ET2.

That is where I sat and waited. And waited. And waited until about 10:15pm. By this time, my brother had the rental car parked in the garage next to my Mom's car waiting for me to come with the AAA tow truck.

When AAA finally arrived at the airport, the guy called to tell me that he was trying to get into the garage, but that security wouldn't let him. What happened to meeting me at ET2? I had to run down to the entrance to meet him to physically tell the security guard, Julie McUseless*, that yes my car was broken and yes I had called AAA to come tow us away.

The first thing I noticed was that the AAA truck was a not a tow truck. It was a heavy duty pick up truck. This does not bode well.

We explained to the guy what happened and he proceeded to pull out multiple implements with which to bang on the starter under the hood. One was a crowbar, one was a piece of metal, and another was a 4-foot long steel pipe. Like he was going to go all Kung Fu on the car. That's where we drew the line. My brother told him to just get a freakin' tow truck out here so we could go home.

Here's the rub. Apparently tow trucks don't fit in the parking garage. Say what? Yes, and judging by how no one seemed to know what to do, apparently never in the history of mankind has a car needed to be towed out of the garage at Lambert International Airport since it was built in 1956.

The AAA guy told my brother to get in the car so he could push the car out of the parking space and down the ramp out of the garage cover. Problem was that AAA guy was no match for the Oldsmobile Alero, so I was enlisted to help push as well. Did I mention I was wearing flip flops? And that it was now 42 degrees?

We got the car to an open area where we left it parked in a striped no parking zone. My brother joked with Julie McUseless that "Gee, I hope the car doesn't get towed." To which her response was "Oh WHAT, now you don't want to get towed??" Please go back to Meramec Community College and get a sense of humor.

At this point, the AAA guy said a tow truck was on the way and we were basically free to leave the car and go home. No one, including Julie McUseless, said anything different, so we piled in the rental and headed out.

We were no more than 15 minutes from home when AAA called me and said that the tow truck was there, but the security would not let my Mom's car leave the lot without paying the parking ticket... a whole whopping $5. Seriously??? We asked if they could make a one-time goodwill exception. Absolutely not. We asked if we could pay over the phone with a credit card. No way.

Yes, we actually had to turn around and drive back to the airport.

This time, my brother dropped me off outside the parking structure so he didn't have to go in and pay for parking again. I ran over to where we left the car in the no parking zone and Julie McUseless was there with the tow truck driver, Paul. I had the ticket in hand and in my exasperation, offered to pay the maximum daily parking fee of $21 just to be able to leave and go home. The ticket booth lady said nope that the car had to physically cross the line at the parking structure exit before we could pay the ticket. I'm not making this sh*t up. This is where I was really expecting Peter Funt to walk out from behind a wall and pat me on the back and tell me what a trooper I've been. But he didn't.

Even though we were out in the open on the parking deck, the tow truck couldn't get to us. I saw the tow truck backing in an exit only ramp where he stopped before the top of the truck hit the parking deck ceiling. Just then, a policeman pulled up with his lights on, presumably to ticket the AAA driver for backing into an exit. Great! What next?

The tow truck driver walked down to where I was standing with Julie McUseless and the car and told me to get in the car. I had this look on my face that said "Porquoi?" He said that he had to push the car out through the toll booth so I could pay the ticket and then over to the waiting flatbed truck.

This revelation caused an eruption of laughter brought on by both the absurd situation and exhaustion. And my toes were numb. What else could go wrong? How about when Officer Goodwin came over to help the tow truck driver push the car, he broke my Mom's taillight! Yes! And then when I confronted about it, he denied it! Yes! Seriously, what else.

At this point, they rolled me up to the booth, I opened the door to pay the ticket (no power windows) and the lady told me to have a nice day. Really. Thanks a lot jackass.

This entire episode lasted five exasperating hours on Monday night.

Note to self: If your car is going to break down, make sure you're not anywhere near the Lambert Airport garage.

*Julie McUseless is not her real name. We don't know her real name, but we're pretty sure we got it right.