But It's Clean!

Today was a gorgeous day. I mean, just beautiful. Because it was so nice, we decided while we were out and about that it would be a good time to wash the car, and get all that winter muck and salt off. There is an automatic car wash at the place that we normally get gas, and you can buy a car wash right there at the pump. You pay for it with your gas, and the computer just gives you a code to enter in at the door to the car wash bay. I'm sure all of you are familiar with this type of set up.

So we finish pumping our gas and drive around to get in line for the car wash. Being such a beautiful day, it looked like others had the same idea as us. There were about three cars in line ahead of us, and one more in the bay. Let me set the scene just a little. The driveway to this car wash bay has small retaining walls, about a foot high, on either side of it. On the left on the other side of the wall is a small expanse of grass and a tree. On the right on the other side of the wall is a hill and a drop off, I'd say about ten feet high, down to the parking lot of a grocery store. Basically, once you get in line for a car wash, your only way out is to back up (assuming no one is behind you,) or to drive through the bay.

So around the corner we came to get in line at the beginning of the driveway. As we started to drive up, we noticed a woman get out of the last car in line. Not really such an unusual thing. But then she turned around and locked the car. Ooooook. Then she walked away. My husband and I looked at each other and it was obvious we were thinking the same thing "She's not parking there, is she?" We sat and watched her walk over to the convenience store at the gas station in stunned silence. But, we figured there were several cars ahead of her, so she would probably be back by the time it was her turn to enter the bay. At least, we hoped that would be the case.

We didn't really wait very long, and she came wandering back to her car in time to move forward and enter her code at the bay. This particular car wash requires that you wait until the bay is empty to enter your code, which she seemed to do without a problem. When the computer had accepted her code, and the green light came on to tell her to pull her car forward into the bay, I began to realize there was a problem. She drove forward into the bay, and it occurred to me that she had not yet rolled up her window. I kept waiting. She didn't roll it up. My husband started to say out loud, "window. Roll up the window. Better roll it up!" She still didn't roll it up.

And the next thing that happened was exactly what I thought was going to happen. The car wash was in the process of pre-rinsing the car, and before she even realized her window was still down, she had been pre-rinsed, too. A spray of water came down the side of the car, through the open window, and hit her square in the face. From an observer's point of view, it was kind of like watching one of those movies where you know the consequences of someone's idiotic actions before it happens, and then you watch those consequences in slow motion. The action of the water coming in the window, hitting her, the hair on her head being flattened in one spot from the sheer force of the water, and her reaction (which was a recoil away from the water that nearly launched her whole body to the other side of the car), appeared to happen slowly over several minutes, though it really only took a few seconds. It wasn't until after she recovered and rolled up her window that my husband and I recovered from our awe enough to start laughing. And laugh we did. Loud enough and hardy enough that I'm sure she probably heard us, even through our closed windows, her now closed windows and the sound of the car wash cleaning her car.

What was really frightening to me about all of this was that when she got out of the car originally, I noticed that she was wearing scrubs. It worries me that someone like that might work in a hospital, or even a doctor's or dentist's office. It worries me more that she might have been a nurse. And unfortunately she even reaffirmed the old cliche. Yes, the woman was blonde. But hey, at least she's now a clean blonde, right?