Creepy Car Wash Man and the Skunk

I've officially switched to summer (vampire) time, which means I'm just starting my day. Sure, I was up at 8 a.m. and had a horrible social interaction at the car wash by 11, but I was feeling ill by 1 p.m. and took a long nap. Must be the allergy shots I had at noon.

So the horrible social interaction . . .

Backstory: I kinda forgot to drive the "skunk" for a couple of . . . um . . . weeks. Due to my neglect, the skunk got crabby and wouldn't start last Thursday when I had a "oh shit I don't want to get gas for the truck it's easier to move cars" moment. The beepers wouldn't work to open the doors, which was a big clue. I suppressed the urge to call and whine at my brothers immediately and went and bought gas for the truck. Drove out to Milford that afternoon to get the hair fixed -- since the ends were turning pinkish blonde -- and borrowed the battery charger. Managed to hook up the battery charger without electrocuting myself and voila! working skunk car. So I have to drive it to charge up the battery more, so I won't be in this situation again . . . did I mention that the skunk does not have air conditioning? (well, it's broken) So I'm driving the skunk everywhere and pushing the limits of 4 x 40mph cooling.

Story: It irks Mr. Crabbypants when cars are dirty. The skunk is very dirty because it sat for, let's just say, "a while". It sat at the front of my driveway, which happens to be under an out-of-control, some sort of berry, tree. I don't know what kind of berries they are . . . let's just call them the "incredibly messy berries". I don't think they are supposed to come from a tree. I'm sure, once upon a time, it was a plant or bush somehow. (the previous owner paid little to no attention to landscaping arts, so it's a "natural" jungle) I'm sure I'll eventually get around to cutting it down, really, I will. But when you have an incredibly messy berry tree over your car, you have birds . . . who are interested in the messy berries. They eat them and eat them and eat the incredibly messy berries and then you have another kind of mess on your hands. This was all over the skunk. This was upsetting Mr. Crabbypants enormously. This was getting me stares at the gas station. So I decided to stop by the quarter car wash.

I only usually go to the quarter car wash near my house at night. It's, like, a place you sneak into. A place you don't want to be seen. Certainly not a place for social interaction. But this was morning and there were actually other humans at the quarter car wash. I pull into a bay and go to the change machine. I try to put a dollar in and the machine doesn't work. It doesn't try to grab the dollar. It doesn't make any noise. I try a couple more times, mutter a swear word or two, and walk back to my car deciding to go to the "real" car wash next to my allergist's office. Problem solved, won't have to get wet, I'll go to the real car wash . . . and there is knocking on my window.

There is a very tan man, in the thinnest dress shirt with a gaping hole in the armpit. I haven't showered yet (on advice from the hair stylist) and this man looks more unwashed than I do. Tap, tap, tap. I roll down my window. "Change machine not workin'?" I am now thinking that this is another customer that wants to confirm that the change machine didn't work for me either. "Let's go see if we can fix that." Okay, now he's either an employee of the quarter car wash (didn't know they had those . . . why is there a phone number posted everywhere? Where does he sit?) or a random guy who wants to show me up at the change machine. We walk to the change machine while I'm thinking that I should have just stepped on the gas but I didn't want to run over his toe. He is lecturing me about the change machine . . . "folded money from your pocket doesn't work, money from a wallet is better" . . . "here give me that dollar" . . . he feeds the machine with one of his wallet dollars and two of my folded dollars and then observes, "you aren't very trusting are you?" Which makes me want to punch him and then makes me think . . . wow, that's exactly what a serial killer would say . . . so he motions for me to pick up my quarters and I go back to my car calculating how foolish it would look to just drive off after going through that lecture and getting the quarters. I feed the quarters into the machine and spray off my car, keeping my eye out for him to come back.

"You aren't very trusting are you?" How does one respond to ripped shirt mystery change machine gurus who are trying to examine your trust issues? Call me crazy but I don't trust random men who rap on my window? I used to live in Detroit? Umm. . . I don't usually come to the quarter car wash to pick up older men? Please don't kidnap and rape me?

So the "real" car wash it is from now on, I guess.