I just washed my car! Oh, what’s that you say? A snow storm??

Coleman and I made New Year’s resolutions for each other. Actually, it’s possible that Joel and Marlin made resolutions for us; I can’t quite remember. At any rate, here they are:

Coleman: Stop calling me ‘Jill’ and start calling me ‘Jillian’.

Jillian: Clean my car, inside and out, and generally take better care of it overall.

So, this past weekend, Coleman pointed out to me that I hadn’t exactly been holding up my end of the deal. Problem is, I don’t know how to wash my car!

I may have mentioned this before, though I’m not sure, but I’ve never had luck in taking my car through the car wash. Coleman, in an act of desperation, showed me one time in Denver. He drove me, in my car, to the nearest car wash and showed me step by step how to pick a wash, get the wheels on the tracks, and go through the car wash. “Simple!” I thought. “What have I been so scared of?”

Yeah, that was easy to say. Until I tried to take it through on my own THREE times with NO success. One time, I couldn’t get the wheels on the tracks. One time the green “drive” light kept shining all the way until I drove through the entire car wash. Never told me when to stop. I just kept driving until I got home. The third time, the credit card machine wasn’t working, so I couldn’t even try to go into the wash.

This weekend, though, I did it. I asked Coleman to go with me to the nearest car wash and show me once and for all how to clean my car. Nervously, I pulled into the parking lot with him in the passenger’s seat.

“Where do I go?!” I screamed. “I don’t know where to go! What line do I get in? Why are there so many PEOPLE?!”

“Calm down!” he said. “Just follow the car in front of you.”

A girl approached my car with a clip board. “What kind of wash do you want?” she asked, as I rolled down my window.

I looked at her like a deer in headlights. “What kind of what? What?  I don’t know. WHAT KIND OF WASH DO I WANT?? PICK IT, COLEMAN! WE’RE HOLDING UP THE LINE!”

“We’ll do the middle one,” he told her.

She wrote something on my windshield with a wax pencil and I drove forward.

As we slowly approached the  car wash, I got butterflies in my stomach. Car after car went into the wash, and we were getting closer and closer. I started to get tears in my eyes. “I don’t know what I’m doing!”

“Just follow the signs,” he said. “See what that says? Drive on the track, put the car in neutral and take your foot off the break.”

Miraculously, I managed to get my wheels on the track. I even remembered to put my car in neutral!

“Take your foot off the break, ma’am,” the attendant shouted at me through the window.

“OK!” I screamed, wild-eyed.

“Calm down!” Coleman told me.

I closed my eyes as the car went through the wash. I started feeling claustrophobic and short of breath. Finally, there was light.

“WHEN DO I PUT MY CAR BACK IN DRIVE? WHY IS THAT LIGHT RED? HOW DO I KNOW WHEN TO GO?” I yelled.

“Just wait for it to turn green and say ‘go’,” Coleman explained.

The light turned green and the car stopped. I sat there.

“Go!” Coleman said.

“But nothing says ‘go’. It’s only green. You said it would say ‘go’!”

“Just go!”

I put the car in drive and peeled out of the parking lot like a mad woman.

“You did it!” Coleman said, as I pulled onto the road.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said, still shaking.

But I did it :)