Fun Friday – Visibly Clean

 

I’ve often heard the phrase, “cleanliness is next to godliness.” Here’s a thought to ponder, does that phrase apply to the vehicle you drive? I’m asking for a friend…maybe. I keep my gas tank filled, have my oil changed regularly, but washing my car…yikes. This is where my story begins.

Once upon a time in an inner-city parking lot, I met him, the owner of a car detailing shop. He wasn’t there for me, but to take care of a fleet of city owned vehicles. There was an instant connection, he had a detailing shop…I owned a car. After seeing his work on a fleet of eight vehicles, I knew he was the one…for my car.

When I told my colleagues I was having my car detailed, they jumped on the bandwagon and scheduled an appointment too. The owner “Jake” brought his equipment to us and began the detailing job with my car. I warned him that my fabric seats needed extra love and attention. In other words, they were past dirty…and my seats are a light color.

I checked on Jake’s progress, he was on his hands and knees, scrubbing, grunting; I saw patches of sweat on the back of his white T-shirt. When he stood to talk to me, I saw that his face matched his shirt, drenched with tracks of sweat. He used the back of his hand to wipe seat from his brows.

“Hi Jake, it’s looking good, were the seats bad?” I asked.

“Yes, but the carpet was worse, I had to dig into the fibers.”

“Oh.”

I went back inside and got out of Jakes way.

This company cleaned eight buses in the time it took to clean my 4-door sedan.

After he finished, Jake brought my keys back to me; sweat still covering his face like makeup, and his t-shirt clinging to him like a wet T-shirt contest.

I said, “I guess I shouldn’t ask for a discount.”

He didn’t even want to tell me the final cost; he wrote it on a piece of paper and handed it to me.

After my car, he cancelled the rest of his appointments…went out of business! Not really, but it was a funny thought. He did have to postpone my colleagues’ detailing until the next day, due to time constraints (time invested on my car).

Jake told me, “If you’re not going to clean your car often, you might want to invest in seat covers. And your tires, I got the rust off the rims best I could.”

When I walked outside to my car at the end of that day, it was visibly clean. Sitting in the driver’s seat, looking through the windshield, I could see up to Heaven. My car had been transformed. It was clean.

The end.

The moral of the story…take care of your vehicle, treat it to a deep cleaning every now and then. How often do you deep clean your vehicle?