Not The Brightest Bulb

Phone rings:

Me: Hello?

Woman: (sounding authoritative) Hi, I am the manager of ______ apartments, do you own a blue van?

Me: (surprised) uh…yes. Yes I do.

Woman: (sure of herself now) Sir, your van is parked in someone else’s parking spot.

Me: (pretty confident) Umm, no, no it’s not.

Woman: You DO own a blue minivan?

Me: (having fun now) I sure do!!

Woman: The spot you are parked in belongs to someone, it’s a paid spot.

Me: Yes, I know, it belongs to me.  My van is parked here in my garage.

Woman: But….

Me: (somewhat annoyed now) Why are you calling me? How did you get this number.

Woman: I looked inside the blue van and there is box on the seat, your phone number is written on the box.

(complete silence for a few seconds while my brain does backflips. WTF??)

( Then I figure it out.)

Me: The van belongs to a TV repairman. The box is probably the part for my TV, he’s supposed to be here right now, he’s probably coming here next.

Woman: (and this is priceless) Well, what is he doing here?

Me: I’m not sure, I’m guessing he’s fixing someone’s TV in your building.

Woman: Because that spot belongs to someone, it’s a paid…

Me: (cutting her off) I sorry miss but I can’t  help you,  call _____ repair shop, it’s their van.

Woman: Ok, I’ll do that.

Me: Ok-bye.

Just to give you the background, the bulb burned out on my DLP HDTV, if you have any kind of television like this, you know the joys of replacing one. Easy, yes. Cheap, no. I bought the TV at a fantastic independent Audio/Video store a few blocks from here, and within three hours of calling them, they had the new bulb installed in my TV. But it was after I called them and before they got here that I received this call.

Had I not figured it out, I would have spent days, weeks, maybe a lifetime wondering what the hell my phone number was doing on a box in a van. Or worse, the van would have been towed and I would have gone an entire evening without TV. (gasp!)