sunburns, hoses, and clay

Today the youth group of my church had a car wash to raise money for church camp. This is the first one we've ever done, and we had lots of fun at it. A detailed account follows.

Perhaps I should back up a moment, though, to recount what happened this morning.

I was standing in my room, innocently working on my scrapbook and listening to "Adventures in Odyssey". I was cutting out yellow butterflies to go with the pages from the campout. Rather groggy from my sleep last night (I had a hard night of it), I wasn't thinking too clearly. My bedroom door was shut. Above the sound of the CD, I heard footsteps coming down the hall towards my room, but I didn't think much of them until they stopped in front of my room. Someone asked, "May we come in?" and knocked on the door. To me, it sounded a little bit like Daisy, but funny, somehow, as though she was making her voice higher than usual. The door swung open. I turned around with a grim pout on my face, prepared to deal with one of Daisy's requests. Instead of looking at Daisy's face, which is at my eye level, I found myself staring at the polka-dotted chest of a T-shirt. My eyes flew up, and there was Violin, grinning at me. I shouted her name in delight, and hugged her. It turned out that SwanElf had come along, too, and Daisy trooped in last of all. "You had such a funny look on your face!" Violin giggled. They all ensconced themselves on my bed, where Violin proceeded to flip through my unfinished scrapbook pages. We talked about math, and how no one ever reads the instructions on algebra lessons, and about the remodeling on their house. The electrician is supposed to come today.

I realized with a jump that it was nearly nine-thirty. I marched everyone off to the car, with two hoses coiled like yarn in the back, a couple of stacks of plastic buckets, lots of old rags, and various miscellaneous containers for water and lunch. We arrived at Albertson's rather early, having been misinformed that we were supposed to be present at nine-thirty. In fact, the pastor, Mr. P, and his boys, Sam and Boromir, didn't come until fifteen minutes later. We sat and stewed in the car until they arrived. Then Meri, Estella, and Betty arrived, and Princess and Marigold, and Boromir's friend, Daniel. We managed to hook a hose up to a spigot and get things organized: three buckets full of soapy water. My car, a Ford Taurus, was the first customer. Then Princess's mother came with her big suburban, and Mr. P let us wash his green minivan. We also washed my family's other car, a silver Toyota Sienna.

Five people were usually standing by the kerb, holding up signs that Boromir had made. As a result of this advertisement, we had plenty of customers to keep us busy. Sometimes, there were three cars waiting to be washed at once. We washed a "crab" car (it's really called an Aztek, but we call it that it looks crabby), a Toyota Land Rover, several minivans, and lots of smaller cars. We washed a slick, brand-new sports car, too. We washed Princess's grandparents' car, a navy blue Dodge Grand Caravan. We washed a white Suburban belonging to another family in our church. The three children sat inside and ogled us through the window. We washed Princess's father's pickup truck. It was fairly dirty, but the worst part was the bed: it was full of bits of sticks and gravel. I hosed it down, but the water just ran into one corner of the liner and refused to flow out. So everyone stood on the tailgate, and with Boromir and Daisy pushing the water with sponges, we managed to convince a lot of it to flow out of the truck. Our most difficult customer was a big diesel pickup truck, with out-of-state plates. Its owner was in the construction business, and his truck looked like it: its wheel wells were caked an inch deep in red clay. We scrubbed and scrubbed and put the hose on its most powerful nozzle setting and squirted water as hard as we could, but we never got it completely clean. By the time we were done, SwanElf had mud splattered all over her shirt and neck and face.

It was blazing hot in the sun. Occasionally, we would (accidentally or on purpose) squirt each other with the hose. Our faces were freckled with suds, and our clothes hung limp, dark, and wet against our slick, sweaty skin. Princess's feet were scorched scarlet where her flip-flops hadn't covered them. Our faces were red with sun. Violin's hair flew around her face in wild wisps, and my bangs stood up from my forehead in wiry curls.

There was only one hose, which presented a problem for three reasons. First, it couldn't always reach the further cars very well. Second, when there were lots of cars, we could only wash one at a time. Third, there were fifteen of us, and when the car had been thoroughly washed, fourteen of us stood and shouted and pointed to spots that had been missed so that the person with the hose had to keep rushing around and around the car in order to rinse all the soapy places.

Standing on the kerb holding a sign was the worst job of all. There was nothing to do but blink through my sunglasses and watch the cars whiz past. My legs ached and the wind tugged the sign, and the only thing I could think about was all the tunes running through my head: Enya, Mozart flute concertos, Barber, Brother2's latest piano piece.... The grass was spongy under my sandals, and my feet left deep marks in the earth. So many people flew past: "dudes" in their sports cars, blaring out music; truckfuls of Mexican construction workers; frazzled mothers; sleek little college girls with their makeup carefully painted onto their neatly tanned faces; brusque businessmen; boys wearing filthy baseball caps; elderly people squinting at the shimmering road; and little, round-cheeked children peering out back windows. A scissortail flycatcher perched on the thrumming telephone wires over my head. He fluttered his rosy wings and wiped his beak on the lines.

At noon, between cars, I perched on the front bumper of my car and munched my soggy peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. The strawberry jelly was the consitency of sloppy glue, and the crunchy peanut butter was so gooey that it hardly had any crunch. Princess sat next to me and complained about how gross her sandwich was. We made quite a pair. Then a car came along, and in my haste I dropped my sandwich on the concrete. Conveniently, for then I didn't have to finish it. :) Instead, I munched on salty sunflower seeds and raisins. They weren't soggy.

We worked hard. And when we weren't working hard, we squirted each other with the hose, or rinsed the buckets out, or battered our dirty rags with water, or threw soapsuds at each other. The grime from the cars collected in the gutter of the parking lot--clay, asphalt dust, gravel, bits of trash. We shouted and laughed with each other. Boromir was covered in foamy suds. They clung to him like cotton wool. SwanElf was completely drenched and slopped around in her wet jeans, grinning good-naturedly at the world out of her dudette sunglasses.

I sucked a peppermint and tried hard not to think about swimming and lying down.

Diesel fumes from the road blew into our faces. The spray from the hose drifted across the hot asphalt, pecking my skin like bits of flying sand. The dry asphalt was harshly hot; the wet asphalt was slick as fish scales.

Our last customer was Violin's mother, who arrived just as we were putting things away, at ten after two o'clock. (Two o'clock was our end time.) We hosed down her Crown Victoria. Violin had to turn away another customer who pulled in.

Princess's mother arrived with her three younger siblings. Susie, the youngest, had a pair of cute little braids, one on each side of her head, that waggled like long ears as she bounced across the parking lot behind her mother. Princess's mother bought a big back of flourescent-colored popsicles for us, and we each had one--cherry, blueberry, lemon, or orange. We stood in the parking lot and sucked the icy tendrils thirstily. They soon dissolved into sticky syrup. Princess's mouth was coated with red streaks. We all stood in a semicircle while Daniel doused our church's intern with the hose. No one minded much. We were all too tired and apathetic to be excited or annoyed.

We packed our belongings together, and one by one, we pulled out and drove home. Violin went home with us to work on a VBS project with Daisy...

...but that is another story for another time.