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You need to focus on living a clean life because, well, people will like you more and invite you to saunas, clam bakes, and golf weekends. No more blowing off washing your feet in the shower because your belly won’t allow you to bend over that far. Figure it out somehow.
Also, would you please make your gross bed in the morning and clean out the Saltine crumbs from around your pillows? And put on some clean clothes that don’t smell like 8-week-old leftover spaghetti with fungus crust icing. Oh yeah, and stop cussing, you shithead.
And take after me, a man who wouldn’t do anything he doesn’t ask you to do. Clean your car.
After several years of abject neglect and as a Christmas present to my family, I cleaned my car using a vacuum with sorry-ass suction. On the floor of the front left seat, I rubbed the suction thing back and forth pushing around stale French fries, dead, dark brown autumn leaves, rug-burned honey-covered peanuts, and rusted coins.
All these objects danced up and down like in a popcorn popper but stayed there. Instead of cleaning the car, I was rubbing the rug. Hoping a new rug would change the performance of the vacuum, I shifted to the front seat. This required me to get my entire body inside the car while maneuvering the vacuum tube around my contorted bones and muscles to position it to rub the rug. Again, I watched all the grime bounce around in place and stay on the rug rather than disappear up the chute.
The hose twisted around my waist and legs causing me to stretch and feel uncoordinated. I felt like a snake was attacking me with the intent of wrapping around me so tight I would pop like a balloon. Not only was I unsuccessful in my chore, but I was also being attacked by a snake that could, if it spits its poison on me, would cause me to croak at the car wash. Tomorrow’s headline on the Sammy Sportface Baby Boomer Brother Blog: “Snake Kills Sportface With Slimy Spit at Carwash.”
I also felt time pressure, which worsened the experience. After inserting eight quarters into the machine slot and arm- and body-wrestling with the hose, 80 percent of my two minutes of vacuum time had elapsed. Money sucked out of my life with a vengeance. It was like going to a peaceful lake and throwing all your coins in the water. This encapsulated life: Pain and suffering and doing things that don’t work than giving up.
On the rug I started finding an endless supply of rusty pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters, several stuck together by dry chocolate. Even with vivacious vacuums, coins never go in the hose so these had to be dealt with in some other way. I picked up those coins and heaved them out the car door haphazardly onto the ground making ching noises. I littered, the equivalent of petty larceny and three points on my driver’s license.
Feeling slightly guilty, I surveyed the entire landscape inside the car to see how much dirt and grime I had to battle with. Sliding the front seats up, I found more piles of fries, peanuts, dead dark brown dry and deceased autumn leaves, and slime grime.
Seeing this unpleasant sludge, I realized I would be vacuuming this car non-stop for days and never get it clean. So I needed to feel some sort of cleaning satisfaction. Enter Plan B.
I went into the Circle K and got some Arm and Hammer Baking Soda or Mr. Clean or something and sprayed it all over my stickshift paneling which had stale coffee and chocolate bar stains burned into the upholstery. Wiping up this grime didn’t do anything. To dislodge the baked-in sludge, I had to use my fingernails like a knife.
In an eerily similar way, chipping away at the gross grime was slow and unproductive and made me feel sad. My car still looked like dog doo
showered with dated fast food confetti.
Beaten, I got in the car and drove away cussing several times. “Darnit it and phooey,” I said. On the ground I left $8.72 cents worth of coins; actually, $8.62 if you count the five penny pairs stuck together for eternity by chocolate goo.
Growing hungry, I headed over to McDonald’s and got two large fries. Several fell on the front seat floor, between the crevices of my seat, and on my lap. The car was dirty again, but it wasn’t time to clean it.
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
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