It starts when your wife tells
you that you seem to have become negative over the last week. Negative? Well, I
don’t think so. Me? Of all people???
But, actually it does seem that
many things have gone awry lately, maybe I am a little down. Just because my back
aches, and I broke a bottle of liquid on the garage floor while getting the
groceries out of the car, and… yeah… there is the computer virus someone is
trying to implant in my laptop, and… well about a thousand other things.
But, the GOOD news is that the
new automated car wash in Palm Coast Florida has lots of suds!! I found out as
I tried out the new place which is pretty much completely automated after the
initial mirror check and bug removal at Stage 1.
It is terrific… You pay for the automated car wash with a
credit card device, pull up to the front of the line where two young guys are
standing. As you reach the red line, these “almost eager” workers jump into action. They start washing
the bugs off of the front of the car, make sure your side mirrors are
retracted, give a special wash to the windshield. Then they direct you to put
car in neutral… foot off of the brake…and … the car rolls forward into the wash
bay.
Being the gracious and
entertaining fellow that I am, I have the driver’s side window down while the
attendants do their job regaling them with some old jokes and friendly
comments. Then they finish their work and we move on. AND, at that moment… that
particular moment… the driver’s side electric window, for the first time EVER,
refuses to go up.
As I frantically wrestle with the
offending button, we roll quickly into the car wash, tons of suds washing over
and into the car. As the panicking occupant (that would be me!!) wrestles with
modern technology, an electric window which having only a two way button is not
overly complex, about 1,000 gallons of water and soap suds are poured into the
car by a completely unsympathetic automated process which I am guessing gets a
perverse kick out of dousing the cheap customer who opted for the low cost wash
instead of the $50 FULL SERVICE with hot wax and whitewall tire cleaner.
As the
water and suds flowed in covering the dashboard, the seat, most of the interior
AND… the driver, I am almost positive I heard a faint electronic “chuckle
coming from the mechanism !!!
Now, having been recently
admonished by a certain wife who is ALWAYS correct, and remembering well her
exact words about my being negative, I started to laugh!! I laughed with suds
on my face and in my mouth, suds on my shirt and pants, suds on my head, suds
in my lap and all over the inside of the car, water streaming in as if I was
under Niagara falls.
I FINALLY got a little
cooperation and the window suddenly went up just as it dawned on me that the
window problem might relate back to an incident some months ago when a
foolishly placed cup of soft ice cream slid off of the dash board onto the
window button unit as I, oblivious to the danger, accelerated and the ice cream
went flying.
I learn a hard lesson, apparently! But to show that I am NOT negative,
TODAY I laughed uncontrollably all the way through the car wash.
As the car rolled out of the bay
I smugly thought, “That’ll show her!! Who is negative? Certainly not me!!! “
And then as if to offer one last humiliation, a big blob of soapsuds fell off
my head into my lap.
As I pulled off the car wash lot
I thought, to paraphrase Rudyard Kipling: “If you can laugh while all those
around you are not laughing, you probably don’t understand the situation.”
:::sigh:::
It isn’t easy being me.
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