Repo Man: Tales from the Road, Lessons for Life

Das Intro

It's 2:00 AM. You're ripped from a sound sleep by a grinding shriek. Opening your eyes, you see flashing lights dancing across your walls, shining through the window.

You jump out of bed and rush to see what's going on, only to see a pair of men dressed in all-black uniforms strapping your car the bed of a huge red tow truck by the glow of an amber beacon. There was no call. You had no warning they were coming. Confusion, outrage, and fear swirl through your mind.

Then it hits you - it's a repossession.

You fly to the door, desperate to stop the men. Worries of how you'll get to work, how your kids will get to the doctor, and how you'll tell your spouse flood through your mind. Terror grips the core of your being. The worst is happening, right now. A nightmare, made real.

But all you can see as you whip the door open are taillights. They're already gone.

Who would dare to do such a thing? What kind of person has the audacity to bring a personal apocalypse down on another in the middle of the night? Who could just drive up and snatch such a vital component of an entire family's livelihood from right out of their driveway, without even so much as a knock on the door?

That would be me.

My name is Bryan Belrad, and I'm a Certified Asset Recovery Specialist, but you can call me 'Repo Man'; everyone else does. In fact, you could call me The Repo Man, because, with a partner at my side, I repossessed the most vehicles for the firm with the highest per-agent recovery numbers in the United States. That means I brought in more cars than anyone else in the US-of-A, and that makes me the top dog.

For three years, I prowled the streets of New York State, stealing cars with the legal authority of their actual owners, the banks who hold the papers on them. I've taken cars from lawyers, doctors, sports stars and movie stars. I've swiped them from single parents, the recently divorced, college kids, and the recently deceased. I've grabbed them from driveways, parking lots, and even while they were filling up at gas stations.