Tips for Hiding in the Attic When the Repo Man Shows Up

The repo man is in your driveway and your truck has eleven missed payments riding shotgun.

The attic is now your primary residence. Mazel tov.

What follows is everything you need to survive up there with your kneecaps and your last shred of self-respect mostly intact.

You Earned This, Champion

Somewhere along the line you decided that a $74,000 pickup was a personality trait.

Now a man named Dale is photographing your license plate like it’s the Zapruder film.

The attic is the one room in the house the bank cannot legally see into, which makes it your bunker. Climb.

Do not try to talk your way out of this on the lawn.

Dale has heard every sob story written since the Clinton administration.

His heart is a kicked parking meter.

This is a man who once repossessed a fishing boat while the owner was still standing on it, holding a walleye, mid-sentence.

The Attic Is Not the Honeymoon Suite

It’s 140 degrees up here and smells like a squirrel died holding a grudge.

There is exactly one beam strong enough to hold your sad weight, and you are not going to find it on the first try.

You’re going to find it with your shin.

That pink fluffy stuff is not a cozy blanket the previous owner left for you, you absolute walnut.

It is fiberglass insulation, and it will make your ass itch in ways no therapist is licensed to discuss.

Do not lick it.

Find the patch of ceiling directly above the hallway, because that’s the only square foot up here that won’t groan like a haunted pirate ship the second you shift your cheeks.

Pack Like a Coward With a Plan

You get one shot to grab supplies before Dale rings the bell, so grab smart.

• Water. Dehydration is how they eventually find the body, and you want to be a fugitive, not a true-crime episode.
• Snacks that do not crunch, because a single Dorito in a quiet attic sounds like a shotgun going off at a funeral.
• Your phone, on silent, on Do Not Disturb, face-down, and personally prayed over.
• An empty Gatorade bottle. You’ll figure out the bottle around hour two, when your bladder starts sending strongly worded letters.
• A book is optional. Let’s be real, a grown man hiding from his own Tahoe is not cracking open Infinite Jest up here.

Whatever you do, leave the bag of chips downstairs.

Past You bought them. Past You also bought the truck. Past You is the reason you’re sweating through your boxers in a crawlspace.

Going Quiet, You Loud Bastard

Here is the cruel part nobody warns you about.

The instant silence actually matters, your entire body declares war on you.

The sneeze arrives first, roaring in from somewhere near your soul like a freight train made entirely of regret.

Pinch the bridge of your nose and pray.

Your stomach will growl loud enough to legally qualify as a noise complaint in most counties.

And if you have to fart — and you will, because God has a sense of humor and a front-row seat — you bear down, you commit, and you take that secret to the grave.

Your mother will also choose this exact moment to call about Thanksgiving.

Decline her. Decline her with the same cold efficiency the bank declined your refinancing.

Dale Hears Everything

The repo man has the ears of a barn owl and the patience of an IRS auditor on a slow week.

He will park himself directly under the attic hatch and simply wait, breathing through his nose like a man with all the time in the world.

Because he has done this in roughly four hundred other driveways, and he can smell fear and an overdue Carvana invoice from the curb.

Then he’ll say it.

“I know you’re up there, buddy,” in a voice so calm it loosens your bowels.

Do not answer him.

The “buddy” is bait. There are no buddies in the repossession business, only collateral and the men who come to collect it.

If the Hatch Starts to Open

Become furniture.

A sad, sweating ottoman with a payment plan in collections.

Do not fight him, because he’s got a clipboard, a body cam, and a regional credit union behind him.

If your eyes meet through the hatch, you wave. Defeated, fingers only. Man to man.

When the Truck Is Finally Gone

Eventually the flatbed rumbles off down the street with your pride strapped to the back of it under a bungee cord.

Climb down from your kingdom.

You’ll be tweezing fiberglass splinters out of your forearms for the next nine days, and yes, your ass is still going to itch.

Then sit down and pull up the bus schedule, because guess what, sweetheart, you ride the 7:15 now.

The attic isn’t going anywhere, and neither is the next payment you definitely can’t afford.

Maybe leave a cooler up there. Just in case.