Do What You Love

                I freely confess that I’m kind of a whack-job when it comes to washing my car.  There is The Way, and then there are all the other ways.

                Which are wrong.

                I honestly believe that the two scariest things in life are A) having a car full of kids park next to you, and B) allowing someone else to wash your car.

                You heard me right: Nobody but nobody washes my car but me.  I have never, ever been to a car wash.  Ever.  Those high school kids at the corner gas station washing cars to raise money for band?  Ha!  As if.  Go flail your arms at some other sucker.

                I thought my philosophy on this subject was clear to everyone, especially my family.  Which is why I was thunderstruck when my 13-year-old, Jake, asked if he could wash my car yesterday.

                How do you answer the unanswerable?  I was in the front yard working on the lawn when Jake asked.  As the question lingered in the air and I stood there, speechless, I thought, Shoot, why not ask if you can give me a haircut with a hacksaw?

                Now, to fully appreciate the irony of Jake’s question, I have to back up a step.  While this was going on, see, my nine-year-old, Nicholas, was across the street applying white paint to the trunks of my neighbor Wes’s citrus trees.  It was a job Wes had asked Jake to do, but not even the promise of twenty dollars could coax Jake into doing it.  He had done this job once before, and it had two fatal counts against it:  First, it took place in the morning—a time of day to which Jake reacts as though he were a vampire; and second, it was work.  I had assumed my whole morning was going to consist of puttering around in the yard while keeping an eye on Nick.  And now, this?

                “Jake, no,” I said, simply.

                “Why not?” he asked.

                “Because I have a certain way I do it,” I answered, in a tone I hoped would convey, That is just about the stupidest thing you ever asked me.

                But Jake persisted.  “Well, then can I clean the inside with that spray?” he asked.  And even as he posed the question, a sliver of regret stabbed me.  Jake was showing an interest in cars, and I was squashing it.  Still, couldn’t he learn to clean a car on . . . oh, I don’t know . . . a donor car?  My wife’s car?  Something experimental?

                I squelched my natural inclination to say “no” to everything and reminded myself that I’m not nearly as attached to my car’s interior as to its paint.  Spritzing the dash and seats with interior detailer and drying it off with a microfiber towel seemed harmless enough, so I gave Jake my blessing, breathed a silent prayer and returned to my lawn, counting on the drone of the lawnmower motor to drown out my anxiety.

                I emptied the grass bag several times, and each time I passed the open garage door I glanced inside.  Seeing one or the other car doors open every time I walked by, I was amazed at how long Jake stuck to the job.  It may have been the longest he's ever stuck to anything, come to think of it.

                Finally, I heard him calling out to me.  “Dad, come see.”

                I took a breath and went to look.

                There was Jake, in the back seat, having wiped down every leather, plastic or vinyl surface in the car.   The dash was clean, the instrument panel was clean, the seats were clean . . . all of it.  “Oh, and look,” Jake said.  “I even got all the dirt off the pedals.”  I looked: Brake, clutch and accelerator were aluminum-colored jewels.  There was no dirt or dust anywhere.

                And nothing was broken.

                When I got in my car this morning to drive to church and my butt squeaked in my squeaky-clean seat and my feet kept slipping off of my oh-so-clean pedals, I realized something: Jake doesn’t have a problem with work.  He’d spent an hour cleaning the interior of my car, and he’d made no money doing it.  He just needed the same thing we all need: Motivation.

                "Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life," goes the saying.  Well, it’s fine with me if cars are what Jake loves.  They’re a good place to start.