To Wash or Not To...oh, alright, I'll wash it.

So that was it, I could stand it no longer. I pulled out the scrubbers, the soap, and the bucket and I just had to clean it.

For a little back story, this is why I was cleaning my brother’s Neon. Not just any Neon, but a Plymouth Neon. Not just ANY outdated Plymouth Neon, but THE neon he won by picking out the shiniest key, putting it into the slot, and the car going ‘vroom vroom’. Well, after it’s had five accidents, one of which can be partially contributed to Patrick, I now have it in my care. Why, you may ask? Because it went in for a routine check up and it was found that [fill in car talk, something about brakes, it was dangerous, couldn’t be driven, boo hoo, BE A MAN! You don’t need brakes!] and so he took my car. The Subaru. The Outback. He says his friends think it’s brand new right down to the car smell. Darn right they do….

So I mowed the lawn today, and every time I would go by, it would lack doing something and I would be bothered. As the sun shown brightly, it REFUSED to shine. Not even a glimmer from the rearview mirrors. And so that was that, I had to clean it.

Our earlier conversations on the subject had been

“hey, could you clean my car for me and replace the windshield wipers?”
“yeah, sure”
“no, never mind, don’t worry about it”
“ok”

But if I’m to be seen in this car, the something had to be done, so something was. I took out the bucket, the sponges, the little scrubby one with the netting for your scrubbing convenience, and I looked at my enemy. I sized it up. I put the right amount of soap in, added water to the bucket, and I began.

Now, when a normal person cleans their car, they will go to a cheap carwash and get all the dirt knocked off and that will be that, but if this had gone through, the carwash would have to either work on it for a week, or shut down from using too much water.

No kidding.

As I began with the normal big, fat, sponge of death, I decided that I would need much more firepower. I pulled out the big guns. I pulled out….the Sponge of Demise. I took that car all the way down TO THE PAIN…

…or to the paint, either one. All I know is if that vehicle were a person, it would have hurt. It would have bled. It would have sighed in relief.

As I worked my way clockwise from the front to the front, I realized that it wasn’t such a bad little car after all. It was small, compact, and kinda reminded me of a Go-Kart……I’ve always wanted a Go-Kart……

There must be a law, somewhere, about how many bugs can legally hit your windshield before it can be ruled ‘unsafe at any speed’. I mean, anything that could fly could be found. From the smallest of nats to the biggest of…most likely one of his wind tunnel projects…was on his car! Soooo I cleaned it off. Most of it, anyway.

So as I came to my finish, using the Absorber to clean off the windows before they were smeared by the sun, I finally hooked up my CD player with Give Up by The Postal Service and cleaned the windows INSIDE as well.

Which wasn’t bad [advice for cleaning inside of car windows: use Windex and a clean old shirt instead of a paper towel to wipe clean. Leaves less smearing and more shine!]

Inside wasn’t that bad, though. Dust, LOTS of dust, little random mechanical things I hope he didn’t need to keep the car running. There were screwdrivers, coins of all kinds [which is kind of weird, let me tell ya. They were in the cupcoin holder that is on the floor, so I was a bit blustered by all of this] holder, not the , and…..hmm…this part is hard to explain…

There are places where restaurants order their supplies. These companies provide the forks, spoons, trays…everything for these places, including, NAPKINS. Now, my brother must have an aspiration to one day be just like one of those supply companies because he's got to have the worlds largest collection of napkins in his glove compartment/center console. I put them in a plastic bag all by themselves and secluded all 1,001 or em in the trunk. [Perhaps in the dark, in the heat, they won’t multiply.] I also found all of his parking passes from the last…6 years or so. “A Look Through Time From Your Parking Space”. Almost sounds like “This Is Your Life” for cars, don't it?

So yeah, after all was said, done, washed, dusted, and otherwise cleaned, the car shone like nobody’s business. Well, of course, it was my business now. But even after that, I looked at my accomplishment and I thought, it’s not a bad little car, it just needed a little TLC to make it a Tender Lovin’ Car, that’s all.

[REMINDER: Get new wipers…]