Sweets and I had only been dating a short while when he proved to me what a keeper he was.
The first year we were dating he lived in the mission district in San Francisco and I lived in Berkeley. This made a few things slightly more complicated because he didn't have a car and I worked in the city and commuted by train. This meant all our dates had to end by 11:30 or so, as I had to catch the last train from the city back home, and BART only runs for so many hours a day. There was always a little akwardness at the end of the date because we both wanted to remain in each other's company a little longer, but that train was my only way of getting home. So when I started staying over at his house later and later, I had to drive. Driving meant finding parking, and as anyone familiar with San Francisco knows, finding parking is almost as difficult as finding an affordable apartment. Or at least that was the way it was in 1998, when we first were dating.
A lot of the parking in San Francisco is available only at night. Cars are required to clear out by a certain time in the morning to allow for the commuters to have two lanes. Having never lived or stayed in the mission district, I wasn't aware of these rules. I was fairly naive about the whole city parking business in general because i usually chose to park in parking structures, out of convenience. But his neighborhood had no parking structures, so it was street parking all the way.
I'd only stayed the night once or twice before this event, and hadn't ever had my car with me. But on this particular day I needed my car for something and had parked it in a great space just outside his apartment. The next morning I went out to drive it away and my car was gone gone gone.
I freaked out and returned to his apartment, discussed it with his roommate and we concluded that I had in fact been towed. I took the train to work and the called the necessary people to try to locate my car. The car was in a tow-yard, it would cost more than $150.00, and I was maxed out on my credit cards. Every day it stayed at the tow yard they would charge me an additional $50.00 or so for "storage" and I was broke.
Sweets and I hadn't been together so long that I felt I could ask his assistance in this matter. I still phoned him to share my grief, and he jumped up to the plate. He offered to put the charges on his credit card, and he offered to accompany me to the lousy neighborhood where they stored towed automobiles that night after work. Now I can see how he was probably steamed that they charged so much to store cars overnight, and wanted to get it out of there as soon as possible. At the time I was willing to let it sit in the lot overnight and accrue more fees until I could get someone from home to wire me the money.
That evening, after he had worked a full day (on very little sleep, I might add) he and I went to the tow yard. At the tow yard they told us we had to walk back a few blocks to the payment center. At the payment center there was a long line of people from all walks of life also trying to get their towed vehicles back. I didn't know it then, but one thing sweets hates more than having to pay extra money for outrageous fees is having to stand in line. But he did it, listening in with me on all the sorry stories that people offered in attempts to get their fees reduced. We even laughed about it a little.
Once we were at the window, we just paid the bill and walked away. No stories or anything... I had screwed up. He graciously used his credit card and then we had the car. After all that hassle, my car was returned. A few weeks later I wrote out a check in his name for the total cost.
The thing was, he didn't need to do anything to help me out. I parked in a bad spot, got towed and had to pay the fee. He is a nice guy, and he just helped me out for no reason other than he is a nice guy.
I don't know really why I wanted to tell this story. I just did. Maybe because sweets and I are apart for a few days while he collects data for his dissertation. thinking good thoughts.