Van in the Car Wash

It's a good thing we seniors don't mind laughing at ourselves because today we got another chance. Agnes took her van to our Red Hat lunch at the Olive Garden and 4 of us rode with her.

After a terrific lunch we piled back into the van and drove to a nearby Walmart. We tend to forget how silly our purple and red clothes look to anyone not Red Hatters but we don't really care. I mentioned to Agnes that there was a good car wash nearby and she asked me if I'd drive her van through it. I'm not too familiar with driving vans but I agreed to do it. Agnes is fairly recently widowed and has never driven through a car wash so that's why she asked me.

Agnes is very tiny and I'm not so we had to fiddle around with the seat and steering wheel settings before we could even start. It took 3 of us to do that. I got into the driver's seat and was a little horrified to see that the gear shift was on the steering column and I'm not used to that. I managed, with Agnes' directions, to get it into "reverse" and then "drive" and we were on our way.

Agnes went in (snazzily dressed in red and purple and a feather in her hat) to pay for the car wash and a man followed her out to guide us through. Wise man. Still being a little jerky with the gear shift, I got us around to the entrance to the car wash where we waited our turn. Soon our guide motioned me forward and a shot of water hit the windshield, obscuring my vision for a moment. Agnes told me to turn on the windshield wipers so I did...I know you shouldn't do this but I was nervous driving the unfamiliar van and automatically followed orders. All of a sudden everyone was telling me to turn them off, of course.

In this car wash, the car remains stationary while the washing apparatus moves. This made Agnes very nervous because she kept thinking the car was moving. Our guide must have thought all 5 of us little old ladies were crazy, what with windshield wipers going on and off and my jerky driving, not to mention the way we were dressed.

We drove out when the wash was done and I switched seats with Agnes but first she had to readjust everything. She drove around the gas pumps to exit the lot but then Sheila advised her that she should go out the other exit so we made another circle around the gas pumps. Our guide disappeared inside the building and I'm sure he was telling everyone about these crazy old ladies who shouldn't be allowed out on the road.

We all laughed. We don't care!