The car wash blues

One thing I always include on my gratitude list is a healthy sense of humor. Some people might think I'm too easily amused, but I choose to think of it more as a deep and profound appreciation of the absurd. And today I saw an example of the kind of absurdity that cracks me up.

My boss invited me to lunch, something we rarely do, and we went in his pickup truck. As I climbed up into the cab, he apologized for the condition of the truck, which he'd used over the weekend to go turkey hunting in Mississippi. He had a pile of "necessities" in the middle of the front seat, and the outside of the truck had quite a bit of mud on it. Since I'm not a neat freak, none of that particularly bothered me.

We had a delicious lunch at a Mexican restaurant, and on the way back to the office, he asked if I'd mind if he ran his truck through an automatic car wash. Fine with me. He got his ticket and we waited in line until it was our turn. As the water coursed over the truck and the foamy soap covered all the windows, we laughed about how the movement of the car wash mechanism makes you feel as if your vehicle is rolling. As the rinse water rained down on us, we chatted about all sorts of other mundane stuff. What we didn't talk about or even think about was the pile of leaves, twigs and other debris that Nature had deposited in the bed of his pickup truck as it was parked at the hunting camp. And then the high-powered blow dryer kicked in.

All of a sudden, it looked like we were sitting in the midst of a whirlwind. For two or three minutes, leaves and twigs and clumps of wet dirt were picked up out of the truck bed, twirled around high in the air, and, as we watched in amazement, plastered right back against the freshly washed truck.

What a good laugh!