Wash, Rinse, Repeat

I have to say, as they say, that I love washing my car. Not the fancy automatic drive through which swishes the surface hard with brushes, and then whiz, bang blows it dry, dry. I used this for years, saying I deserved it because I was old now, no longer young and constrained by the need to conserve every penny.

This sort of one-off savings is a family tradition. My mother was like this about sheets and towels and she led the way for me. I just threw away some of her pillows; she died in 1993 of old age. It shocked me recently to read an article saying you should change your pillows every two years. No wonder the country is in such a mess with people spending like that.

This is not to be confused with me personally being a thrifty person. I spend like a drunken sailor on trifles better-organized people would balk at such as Taco Bell lunches and McDonald’s ice cream cones. I always get a soda when I go out to dinner, which makes me feel slightly racy and crazy.

But recently, I had accidentally vacuumed up my last token for the drive-through the week before and I was too cheap to spend $20 on seven tokens and much too cheap to spend $10 on three tokens and miss the free token. So, since the day was nice and I was all sweaty from working in the garden, I drove into the booth with the spray wand, feeling very young and chipper.

It costs $2 for four minutes and I felt very hands-on as I slid in my eight quarters and turned the knob to “Tire Cleaner.”

I raced around the car, keeping an eye on the timer: 3 minutes 15 seconds and I was through “Bug Wash” and onto “Soapy Spray.” I don’t like to skip on soapy spray because this is where the rubber meets the road. You have to really get in there and hit your target hard or you’ll have a clean windshield with dead-bug polka dots and you’ll obsess.

Now you’re down to the rinse and The Big Decisions. The three choices are: wax, sealant, and Durashield. These choices are Absolutely Unimportant because whatever you want to tell yourself about any of these things is probably true.

I chose the Durashield thinking the car would feel special having a treat, like buying the dog a $2 dog biscuit bagel from Einstein’s, where I have no trouble spending too much money.

Washing the car with a wand combines all the fun of playing in the water with all the smugness of not wasting your time. I drive away feeling that I have done good things, perhaps even something good for the environment, although I’m not sure what.

I do know it’s hard to feel you’ve done anything good for the environment because the rules for recycling are so complicated and the recyclers so intense it’s easy to feel unworthy in your efforts. Have I washed enough juice out of the plastic jug, or am I costing millions that could have been saved if not for organic matter left by uninformed whack-jobs like me?

What do I do with concrete? We have an old broken concrete bench that I’m frightened to part with for fear of killing an endangered bird in Brazil.

Lately I’ve been driving around with a broken computer screen in my DI box. It’s been almost three months now and I’m starting to get a little desperate. At the car wash someone had left a full-sized, cast iron twin bed frame for another washer to pick up. I briefly considered just stacking the screen on top; of course, someone would crash into it and the glass would spray all over and cause flat tires for days. The car wash would close and the owner would starve.

It will be months before I get up enough nerve to just throw it into someone else’s trash and run. (Kidding. I’ll Google “old computer screens.”)

It’s almost impossible to do good sometimes. Someone is always waiting to tell you the little good you’ve done is not enough.

You don’t save much using the wand.

Will it be enough to recycle my paper? I think it’s probably best I get in early and beat myself up before someone else does.