This is all my fault. It usually is, I don’t know why I’m surprised.

See, I had been thinking I needed to write. My mind has been all jittery lately, which is a sure sign something needs to be cut loose. But I didn’t have anything I really wanted to expound upon.

Until this morning.

I had to meet my DC & company with a folder so they wouldn’t be late for a field visit. Since I was in my personal vehicle and wouldn’t be compensated for mileage, I figured I’d stop and wash Maggie on the way back. It surely wouldn’t be an issue if I were stopping for breakfast, what’s the difference? Ten miles for ten minutes, same thing. I was planning on cleaning her up at lunch today, anyway, so two birds with one stone and all that. Look how efficient I am.

I stop over here at the carwash by Burger King. I like to hand wash, since I have a sunroof and I hear those automatic ones are hard on sunroofs, not to mention paint.
Plus, I’m a pansy. I find them terrifying.

Alright. So two of the wash bays are taped off when I pull in, which makes me a little apprehensive. I ease into the one on the end, noting it’s dry. I give myself a little optimistic word of encouragement. Maybe it’s not broken. Maybe I’m just the first person to wash their car today. I go over to the change converter and feed it my dollar. It reluctantly spits out the equivalent in quarters. All is well. I go back to the bay and begin dumping my loot. It’s obvious that this one is more expensive than the one I frequent by the house. It takes a quarter more to start and then you don’t get as much time per additional quarter. But no matter, I can hustle.

I should add here that I am in 4″ wedges. I’ll include a photo for visual proof, you can even make out some pink stain on the straps. I am sort of dressy today since some friends and I are going out tonight for my birthday. Chesapeake’s, which is a classier sort of joint, at least compared to places I typically dine.

Let me also add that my favorite color is pink, in case you didn’t already know. I like to wear pink. But I don’t want to BE pink.

Ok, so I’ve deposited the required five quarters. The wand roars to life, and I breathe a sigh of relief. So I sink the rest of my stash. Who can wash their car in two and a half minutes, anyway? I take hold of the wand and it’s like a charged fire hose. Fine by me, pressure is a good thing. I get Mags all saturated and turn the dial to foam brush. She needs a good scrubbin’; the soap wand ain’t gonna do it. Not much soap is being generated, and I notice where the apparatus is joined to the hose, there is a significant amount of duct tape. I mentally shrug and keep after it with the brush and miniscule bubble production.

Suddenly, there’s a pop followed by an angry hiss. I turn, and am greeted by a fountain of hot pink foam squirting to every corner of downtown Sevierville. I’m pretty sure the Dolly statue at the courthouse got drenched. My eyes bugged out and I froze, considering my options. I couldn’t get by with the soap wand, of that I was certain. Better just lay in there. Decision made, I scrubbed faster as pink soap oozed and fizzed around me, puddling on my car, the brick walls, the concrete floor. It was like that old movie, The Blob, where the mass grows and slides over everything in its path. I waded through piles of the pink goop as geysers shot forth even more, drops hitting my face and collecting in my hair. It was too late to turn back now.

When I turned 21, me and a couple of friends celebrated on the strip in Knoxville. We were pretty tame, by most peoples’ standards…sure, there were tequila shots, a few random strangers, a few drinks in a hot tub quickly followed by a resurrection of everything I had consumed in the last sixteen hours. What there wasn’t was foam dancing. Oh, it was available, and fun, and I wanted to, but everybody thought that would be a terrible idea (although why the hot tub was never entered their minds). So. Twenty years and three hundred and sixty-four days later, I got to foam dance.
Alone.
With no music.
In a car wash.
Sober.

But back to the situation at hand. I was torn between rage that I was being coated in bumble gum colored soap and a waste of five dollars, not to mention the potential destruction of clothes, versus the fact that this was a quintessential Amy Event and I might as well laugh. So laugh I did, catching the attention of everybody in the parking lot of the gas station, the Burger King drive-thru, and probably the guys in hard hats constructing the firehall across the road. I wanted to take pictures, but time was a-tickin’ and I’d already wasted enough quarters on this colossal mistake. So I continued to scrub, trying to make the squirting foam work to my advantage while also avoiding the worst spurts.

I’ve never seen anything like it. And I’ve seen a LOT. Yes, indeed, I’ve been to two goat ropin’s and a World’s Fair, truly. But in the end, it’s just soap, and my car wound up fairly clean. All’s well that ends well. I have come back to the office and scoured myself the best I can without a shower. Pink stains remain on my shirt, but luckily it’s a pink flower pattern, anyway. My hands are still pink, and one ankle just won’t come clean. But it’s alright, I have a pinkish complexion, anyway. Maybe I can get by with appearing sunburned. Luckily, my pants are a dark khaki color so the splotches are nearly undetectable. Otherwise, I guess I look about as good as I always do. I’m just gonna tell everybody I got some watercolor tattoos.

Moral of the story: thoroughly inspect all apparatus prior to using. Kinda like checking for toilet paper in public restrooms. If you get a bad feeling, walk away.
Or heck, just go with it. It might make for a good story!