My alcoholic friend JJ called me the other day.  He was at work, which is unusual for him, and bored, so he was using the company phone to call friends. No surprise there. The surprise was that he was working for another one of my friends, one who I would have thought would know better than to hire him.

I told Junior that night that I’d talked to him, and doubted that that would end well.

So when I got a slightly panicked phone call from his boss’ wife, I knew right off who she was upset about. And sure enough, it was JJ, he of the getting lost fame. We have a hard time keeping track of that guy when he drinks. And he’s the drinkingest guy I’ve ever known.

So apparently he’d crashed his truck the night before into his girlfriend’s car, leaving them with only one running vehicle. He was allowed to borrow the work truck for the night in order to bring his trailer down to the job site. He was expected to show up for work at 5:30 AM, like normal.

Only of course he didn’t show. Someone got a hold of him around 7 AM, and he said he was on his way, but the train horns in the background gave him away. There are no trains on the freeway. By noon, people were panicking. My friend was ready to call the truck in as stolen, and did in fact talk to their insurance agent and the Sheriffs in town. They settled on charging him with embezzlement of company property for the moment.

They still needed their truck and tools back and had no idea where it was. His house is over an hour away from the jobsite, a little far to go cruising around looking for it. But they knew that I knew him, so they called me to see if I might know where it was. As it happens, he’d just told me during that fated phone call earlier in the week that he was dating a girl from my town, and vaguely where she lived. So I cruised by his house to check – not there. And then I started driving the streets in the area he’d told me the girlfriend lived, just in case.

And sure enough, I found the truck. I was on the phone with my friend, giving her the address so she could call the cops to come get it, when I noticed that the window was open. Still talking on the phone, I walked over and felt inside, and discovered that the keys were in it. That brought the game to a whole new level. Suddenly, I was in a position to get the truck back for them without having to mess with impound fees.

So I drove my own truck around the corner and locked it up. I got in my friend’s truck, scattering beer cans aside, and tried to start it. No dice, and the radar detector was screaming at me. I finally figured out that the truck was still in Drive, so I shoved it into Park and pulled away from the curb, shaking like a leaf the whole time.

As soon as I turned a corner, I heard something from the back seat, and just about pissed myself. JJ was passed out in the truck! He scared me so bad, I can’t imagine how I held it together. I chewed on him a little for scaring me, acting like I had every right to be there. He was so drunk that he didn’t even wonder why it was me and not his girlfriend. I’ve picked up after JJ a time or two, and he’s somewhat used to it. I am very lucky that he’s a friendly drunk and not a mean one, and that he recognized me. And I learned a lesson about looking in the back seat too.

So I turned the truck around, and told him I was taking him home. Once I got him upright and out of the truck I asked for my friend’s business cell phone, telling JJ that I would give it back to them. Then I pointed him towards the house and drove off, leaving him standing in the road looking confused. I took the truck to a place where I could clean out all of those empties, and dump the spilled beer out of the cupholders so I didn’t smell like a brewery. There were two 12-packs and two 24-ouncers in there, with only a couple of beers unopened. He must have been drinking all morning.

A friend helped me pick up my own truck, and we drove them both to my house so the stolen one could be retrieved. JJ knows where I live, of course, but I doubted that he’d get it together in time to go try to find it before my friend and her mother-in-law arrived to pick it up. And while I was cleaning out the truck, I found his own cell phone too, so there’s no way he could call me to track it down. Too bad, not my problem.

I tell you what, I am done picking up after that guy. He’s very lucky it was me and not the cops, as he’d have been back in jail for another DUI. He’s just got his license back for the last one. Since he was so drunk and in the truck on a public road, they could absolutely have nabbed him. But I didn’t do it for him; I did it for my other friends, who are very good people and don’t deserve to be treated like that. I’ve probably burned a bridge with JJ, but I no longer care. He’s abused the good intentions of so many people that I can’t count them any more. He’s a good person when he’s sober, but such a horrible drunk that there’s just no point in trying to help him.

So I don’t think that I stole the truck, as I had the permission of the owner, but I sure did something with it. Repossess it, maybe? Not an experience that I’d care to repeat, that’s for sure. But the boss of the outfit had nothing but good things to say for his all-girl repo team; we helped him out big and he knows it. So it was worth it. And it made a hell of a story.