Finally…after months of cold, gray, and rainy days, Spring has finally decided to arrive. I’ll tolerate having to brush all those tree bud scraps off of my car quite well compared to having to chisel 30 pounds of frozen street slush out of my wheel wells, and I’m sure most everybody in the country can agree with me there. If you are one of those sick people that adore and love the snow, then please, seek help. Sunshine, warmer temperatures, fresh flowers, and people fixing all of the winter damage to their cars…for a counter clerk, this is a wonderful time of the year, because everything is nice. Sure, I’d like to be outside and anywhere besides behind this register, but so long as there are tie-rod ends to replace and brakes to do, the cash register is filling up, the deposits are being made, and that makes Store Manager happy, which gets him off my ass. All is well.

For a bonus point, it’s the start of “washing your own damn car” season. I know that in Arizona it’s illegal, and in California it’s the most wrong thing to do outside of walking in front of a gym while scarfing down a hot fudge sundae, but there is something therapeutic about washing and detailing your own car after winter. It’s just like cleaning your house up, or going through your clothes and realizing that it’s time to get rid of some of them…it’s a way to refreshen things. And I highly suggest that you do it at least once in your life. But I’m noticing a disturbing trend: those with nicer cars or cars that should be getting good treatment are being ignored, while the guy in the 1980s Cavalier wagon just bought $120 worth of cleaning supplies, a buffer, enough wax to take care of a C-5 Galaxy cargo aircraft and pretty much all of our lintless cloths, despite our suggestions otherwise. I don’t want to be the one to break his heart and inform him that there’s no amount of wax-on-wax-off that’s going to pretty that crate up, but where are the normal cars? Why is it that every “wing and a prayer” beater owner has decided that a good scrub down is the ticket? Buddy, Maaco would be a better investment than the three bottles of caranuba wax! I’m sincerely afraid for the Cavalier…once that buffer gets turned on the last of the faded-out silver paint is going to be burned off by a well-meaning individual.

Ah, well….we can always sell him paint and an air gun, I guess…