Given the recent comment of a Larry fan on our disclaimer page my fancy was tickled to document this story.
Back when I was unemployed for eight months, in the time before I was a post man (another story to come) I would spend the morning search thew web for jobs, then going to the gym. I still had a membership to the Buffalo Athletic Club (BAC) and Larry was a trainer at Baily’s. Larry provided me with a free pass for a few months. I would go to the BAC in the afternoon, hand out at home, then head over to Baily’s in the evening for a change of pace. Sometimes I would that around and go to Baily’s in the afternoon.
One day I head into Baily’s to run on the treadmill. Larry spy’s me and comes over, “Hey dude. When you leave can you give me a ride to pick up my car?” A simple request correct? As you will soon see, nothing is ever that simple with Larry.
I had not spent any time with Larry in many months at this juncture, hence forgetting the high score of Larry’s chaos factor. Larry had two free day passes to Darien Lake. I was shocked when we lasted the entire day without an incident. When we left Darien Lake we spotted two girls peeing in between cars in the parking lot. Not directly Larry’s fault, but close enough.
I track down Larry after I complete my work out. I find that Larry left his car in the Mighty Taco parking lot at the corner of Sheridan and Niagara Falls Blvd. The car had stalled and so he flagged down a ride some one of the millions of people he knows, or just talked some passer-by into driving him around. Larry has this cloud of Chaos and influence. Anyone who knows Larry has experienced this.
Larry: “Dude, I’ll square you away if you give me a ride home.”
Stranger: “What? Huh? I don’t even know you.”
Larry: “”I’ll totally hook you up.”
Stranger: “OK”
Larry being Larry left his car in the parking lot for five days. We pull into the parking lot and low and behold (I have never written that phase before :)) half the parking lot is sectioned off and a crew is re-paving this area. There is no sign of Larry’s vehicle. We pull up to a three-some that appear to be in charge. Larry hangs him imposing body literally half out my door.
Larry: “Dude, what happened to the cars that were here?”
Dude: “We posted a warning notice four days ago. The remaining cars were towed to Brown’s Auto.”
Larry: “DAMN IT! *violently pounds the side of my car, scaring the three-some into taking a simultaneous step back*
Larry needs to figure out what he is gonna do, so we head over to Wegman’s back by Baily’s to grab lunch. Naturally I have to pay for Larry, which I do not learn until we are checking out. While eating Larry, of course, runs into some other man he knows and we waste some time talking to this fool. While he did not exhibit any foolish qualities I did not know him so I dub him a fool. Larry borrows my cell to call Brown’s Auto. He stares at the phone a minute before, “How do I make a call?”, “Dial the number and press call.” He is again denied as his fingers are too fat to depress a mere single buttons, hence like cutting the meat of a two year old, I dial the number for him; and for a bonus I press the call button for him.
Larry speaks calmly to Brown’s Auto frantically makes a pen motion in the air to elicit a writing implement from me. I supply said implement and Larry scrawls the info required to retrieve his car on the place mat on his Wegman’s deli tray. Lunch shortly thereafter ends and after Larry dumps his entire tray into the garbage I remark, “Didn’t you need that?” Larry responds with an expletive. He makes a lone attempt to retrieve the info by thrusting his arm into the bassura bin, and then decides he will just call Brown’s Auto again – at a later date.
The final incident in our story occurs as exit Wegman’s. I unlock the car doors with the key chain as we approach my car. Larry enters the car as I pause a minute to put something in my pocket. Suddenly my car gyrated as Larry was waving his arms in a panic mode. He threw open the door and lept out, screaming and dancing around. He scared the crap out of the old lady passing by. It has just now occurred to me the trend of screaming and old ladies (see the “In the Brown” story). Apparently a bee had infiltrated my car.
I drove Larry back to Bally’s and did not see him again for a few days. A typical three hour lunch. I never found out of Larry retrieved his car.
Filed under: Aaron, Buffalo, NY, Larry, Mighty Taco | Tagged: bees, cars, chaos, friends, parking, towing, unemployment |
Comstock Days 
You should try to find out how Larry got his car back, or if he got it back, and how much it cost. That makes a better ending.
C-. This story was much funnier when first told. Also, it is “lo and behold” – no wonder you have never used that phrase before.
The one thing I’m not entirly clear about – was there a trip to Darien Lake somewhere in the trip to get the car back? It would seem so, but not in the 3 hours this reportedly took place. I’m also not clear if you were peed on, or got caught peeing in the parking lot. I would blame Larry anyway in either case.
OK. Here is the non-blog version.
I ran into Larry at the gym and he asked me to give him a ride to pick up his car, which for some reason he left in the Mighty Taco parking lot.
We get there and they are re-paving the lot, telling him his car has been towed. He pounds my car door, scaring the workers outside, then says “Sorry dude”.
We go to lunch at Wegman’s and I have to dial for him since he can’t figure out how to work my cell phone.
He writes the info on where to pickup his car on his tray place-mat, then proceeds to throw it in the garbage.
He is pissed, so we head to my car. Larry gets, but I stop to pull my keys out, and he is flailing about inside, rocking it. He jumps out screaming, scaring some old lady walking by, imagine a black man leaping out of a car – screaming and jumping around.
There was a bee in the car.
The Darien Lake trip was a tangent. It was completely separate from the car story.
No one was peed on, or peed. We saw these two women in between the parked cars, in the Darien Lake parking lot. One was squatting, and the other was trying to block her from view.
I thought the blog version was funnier, but don’t let the cat calls from the peanut gallery get to you. Dan seems to require an ending to this, so I would go with a situation reminiscent of a 1970’s comedy featuring Tim Conway or Burt Renolds. You know, something like Larry tries to break his car out of old Mr Brown’s junk yard and is in the passenger seat yelling as the whole thing is picked up by one of those giant magnet dealies that is going to transport it into the crusher. I think that would be good. You don’t need to have Larry actually get crushed or anything – that would just be ridiculous.
Larry did get his car back, after paying several hundred dollars. If he had only abandoned his car for three days. Larry has bad luck with cars, such as the famous Supra that he parked on Elmwood, and was worried enough about theft that he took out a spark plug each night, but they stole it anyway.
Good lord! Someone stole a Supra? And with the most valuable part removed as well? I thought we had lived in a shit neighborhood.
Larry’s Supra was stolen in NYC, not in Buffalo. He was visiting Limor and had removed the distributor wire (not the spark plug) so that the car would not start. When he returned – most likely after a few days – to where his car was parked, it was gone. Someone had apparently stolen it with the aid of a tow truck. For years afterwards, Larry would display the wire and say “Here’s my car – it’s a fixer-upper”. I maintain that he was illegally parked and the car was “boosted” by the NYPD.
Oh, another thing that happened to Larry’s Supra – the window was smashed in at GenCon (or some other con, perhaps Origins). He replaced the rear window with a sheet of plexiglass. The OFFICIAL STORY was that the “dudes from Iron Crown Enterprises” (makers of the Middle Earth Roleplaying game) had a grudge against Larry and took it out on his car. I’m sure it had nothing to do with petty theft.