Carwashes and French Fries - A Match Made in Heaven
Posted: Sunday, July 08, 2007
by Deirdre Reilly
Exhausted Rapunzel
Every once in a great while, I like to do something that is interesting and full of surprises – in the way that a science experiment is interesting and surprising. I like to, at least once yearly, clean out my car.
I am usually prompted to do this chore when a friend who has just as many kids as I do, and is therefore just as busy as I am, drives up - and as I am wrestling my youngest son out of her car (he never wants to come home! It’s insulting!) I notice that I don’t smell french fries. This association – french fries/car, is so strong in my head that I am hungry in car dealerships and want to drive every time I’m in a McDonald’s. After sniffing around like a hound dog, my eyes then fall on her newly vacuumed floor. Where’s the gunk? How come she’s so organized? While waving goodbye, I decide to take my own vehicle up to the carwash for a good cleaning.
Now, car washes are fun, there’s just no disputing that. I’d like to spend more time at car washes – I find the sounds soothing, and I love the feeling of renewal as those long strips full of suds slap against the sides of the car. There was the one time that I turned my windshield wipers on reflexively and the strips got all tangled up in them…but we won’t focus on that now. What we will focus on is that by the time your car emerges with a last push from the carwash, you have somehow changed your whole life around. You are going to get your closets organized, return the phone calls you’ve been neglecting, and buy plastic bins for winter-clothes storage, instead of using Hefty bags for yet another year. You’ve changed – it’s Organized You. And you like it.
After the outside of the car is washed, it’s time to focus on the inside – you tell yourself you’ll reward yourself with one of those smell-trees that hang from your knobs and smell like restrooms (clean restrooms, or course, in up-scale hotels.) Normally a pretty friendly person, I choose the vacuum station as far away from the mainstream as possible, because I look like a guilty executive throwing out client files by the armload as I attempt to unburden my car from all the papers and trash. Once that is done (Burger King wrappers clinging to my jeans, dirty post-it notes stuck to my hair) it is time to vacuum, or as Native Americans might put it, The Time of the Great Noise. Now, these vacuum cleaners are industrial – I can fit almost my whole head into the tube – and yet, my chosen vacuum always starts groaning and trying to thrash away from me under the sheer tonnage pressure of all the french fries. Also, coins that I didn’t see during the cleaning process (code for: coins I was too lazy to pick up) rattle incessantly in the vacuum tube in a crazy cleaning percussion as I grunt and groan with the stress of trying to reach under the passenger seat (Note: always know where your cell phone is before vacuuming; there is nothing more depressing than having to call it to locate it, only to hear it ring from somewhere deep inside the vacuum. They’ll have to call the manager for this – the one with all the keys.)
Finally, you hang up your vacuum tube, jingle your extra quarters (I always wildly over-estimate costs for this job, and end up with a kitty of three hundred heavy quarters) and look around your car. Not to shabby, you think. Maybe you’ll even get fancy and put a tissue box in the back, or maybe even a small stuffed animal – one that really represents the inner you. Maybe you’ll even get a color-coordinated afghan to throw over your lap on those long trips to CVS. Nah – just go get a smelly tree. I heard they have a new scent, called “French Fry." I’m going to get one!
Deirdre, Loved the article! It made me crack up! Loved the part about picking the vaccuum cleaner farthest from civilization. This article hit too close to home. Recently, we realized there was an unbearable odor coming from our car. . . ended up being my daughter's sippy cup thrown under the passenger seat-it had had choclate milk in it. We can not get enough green trees to cover the stench. Thanks for the laugh!
Deirdre, a fun read. Just a word of warning to everyone, I took my car through one of the washers for the first and last time about a year ago and it was so effecient it promptly took the side mirrors off for me. Opps!
Great article! Bring back a lot of memories too, not only of when the kids were younger, french fries in the car, but you reminded me of days when the car had hidden treasures and the REAL reason I have learned not to go to the do it yourself car washes! Keep em coming, it was true true true..
Deirdre, I had Rolls Royce's song of old, Carwash, playing in my head as I read your article. I laughed. I also had flashbacks, turning on the radio and having the electric antenna emerging from a safe place, torn off ($100). Ooo, I've absent-mindedly opened the sunroof too. Fortunately, I came to my senses before any real damage was done. Now, I just take it to the dealer. I've spoiled the guys in the Service and Previously Owned Dept. They're the ones who prepare those cars for resale. A few dozen donuts, muffins, buckets of chicken and home-made cookies, work! I drop it off and go to the bookstore while they make it look brand spanking new again! I think we all have these stories but you told yours so very well!
