The Writing on The Dirty Window

I know that some people can predict the weather by washing their car. My dad claims that particular gift. If he washes the car, then it’s going to rain within the next twenty-four hours—regardless of the fact that the weatherman just predicted seven days of sun. He has also claimed that if he has his truck detailed that it will hail immediately after but I think this is just hearsay. For years he owned a business where hailstorms brought profit storms, but I don’t recall us having very many banner years. Either that or Dad doesn’t get his truck detailed very often. My gift is somewhat different. Washing my car predicts all sorts of crazy behaviors. This morning, after having washed my car, I watched from my office window as a man fanned across the courtyard with a leaf blower, except that it’s the middle of winter and leaves are long gone. So why the leaf-blower? Apparently so he could blow the dirt off of the courtyard and straight down the sidewalk into my car!!! When I walked outside to give him a piece of my mind, we had a bit of a communication problem since I couldn’t speak his language and he apparently couldn’t speak mine. But I’m pretty sure he said something like, “I not sorry and I gonna laugh with my buddies about you at poker night tonight.”


I’ve also washed my car and immediately encountered a street sweeper spitting muddy water at me. I know, I know, I’m the only person in the city that’s actually seen a street sweeper and I can tell you that they are real—they aren’t myth. I, however, haven’t ever seen a street sweeper on the road leading up to the school where a gravel grenade is launched at my windshield every single morning by some newly-minted teenage driver spinning the tires of his mother’s ten-year-old Camry.

My friend washed her car this weekend and came out to find all her children and her nieces and nephews hanging from the van like a pack of wild monkeys. Fingerprints clouded every window and both of the side view mirrors. I can’t confirm the existence of blow-marks where the children made fishy faces against the window but I’ll bet they were there. My daughter always jumps on the running board of my truck and kisses the window as I frantically shake my head and turn purple before she flits away.

I’ve come to the conclusion that parents just aren’t supposed to own cool shiny cars. Our kids keep us too humble to handle a cool ride. Just the other day a woman at Walmart stopped me in front of my fingerprint covered SUV and said, “We’re you aware that ‘My Mom Sucks’ is scratched into the dust on your back window?” And to think, I always thought I was the cool mom.