A Window Washing Tale (Part 2)

The dad decides his kids need to meet Hector, meet a gas station attendant, talk to a human being in public. He powers down all the windows and rain rips into the SVU, spraying the kids and their devices. There is a chorus of howls and protestations. One kid is on the verge of bawling.

He commands the kids to stow their devices. He introduces Hector and Hector shakes all their hands through the open windows. He smells of gasoline. Now they do, too. They dig it. What kid doesn’t?

The gas keeps flowing. The rig can take about a hundred gallons.

Hector asks what each kid was watching or playing. He knows their shows and games.

The dad exits the car. He tells the kids to get out. They are dumbfounded and whine but comply. The dad herds them over to the window washing station. He yanks a red-handled squeegee out of the blue cleaning fluid. It feels good to wield a squeegee again at a gas station. He was once a master. The girls loved it when he cleaned their windshields without asking. He cleaned every driver’s windshield.

He tells the kids he is going to teach them how to wash a vehicle window with a squeegee at a gas station, and they are going to wash the SUV’s windows—right now—just like their old man used to do. That’s how I met your mother!

The kids don’t say anything. They get out of the vehicle.

Hector smiles, watching it all.

The lesson commences. The dad demonstrates proper squeegee technique and then holds up each kid to a window because they can’t reach it on their own. One of the kid crawls on the hood of the SUV.

They all suck at squeegeeing. It’s not as easy as it looks, and the rain doesn’t help matters.

The rain picks up. Sheet metal rain.

Hector replaces the nozzle and punches up the receipt. He goes over to the other window washing stations and retrieves two squeegees. He hands them out to the other kids and now it’s a three-squeegee child army. They begin running around and squeegeeing everything with a flat surface and even the tires and bumpers.

The dad stands back and directs the effort, if effort is the word. More of a frenzy.

A late model sedan pulls into the island. An old woman is driving and her windows are filthy, coated in dirt, road grime and streaks of mold.

The dad gets the attention of the kids and points to the sedan. They all nod. It’s on! The kids dash over to the sedan and attack the windows. The old woman sees them, gasps a bit, but then claps her hands. She thinks they are elves of some kind. They are, Oregon rain elves, with purpose.

The dad says goodbye to Hector and rounds up the kids. He checks out the sedan’s windows. Streaked and still dirty here and there. So what? He waves goodbye to the old woman. She gives him a thumbs up with the same hand holding a lit cigarette. Quite the trick.

He gets in the SUV and checks the rearview mirror. His three kids are sitting together, each holding a squeegee.