"The Day I Drove Through the Car Wash..." From I Have Words to Spend [1991]
Robert Cormier (1925-2000)
The past year, which is fast becoming just a memory, is the year I drove through the car wash at fifty miles an hour. At least, it felt like fifty miles an hour. The car catapulted through the wash cycle, the wax cycle, and the dry cycle at a ridiculous rate of speed, and then aimed for the street at the end of the tunnel as if shot out of a cannon. The water and the wax had not yet dried —the car looked as if it had caught some terrible disease.
Without looking behind, I drove quickly to one of those do-it-yourself car washes, where I put two quarters in the slot to pay for five minutes of water to wash the gunk off. It was not one of my more glorious moments.
What happened was this: I had driven into the car wash for a $2.75 “wash-and-wax” job, and the attendant took the money and then told me to put the car in neutral. Some kind of conveyor belt would carry the car through the various operations.
I had forgotten that my car was a bit temperamental when it came to shifting. Sometimes the shift pops out of gear into neutral when I come to a stop position. I’d been meaning to have it checked, but it didn’t happen often enough to rush me to the garage.
Anyway, that day I followed the attendant’s instructions and put the gear into neutral from the park position. But somehow the gear slipped into drive, which I did not expect, of course. In fact, at first I thought the forward motion was the conveyor belt, taking both the car and me into the garage.
Then suddenly we picked up speed before the astonished eyes of the attendant.We shot through the tunnel, through all the paraphernalia of the operations—brushes, buffers, and waxers—with what seemed like the speed of sound. At the end of the tunnel we zoomed out into the street while I clutched the steering wheel, relieved to see that no cars were approaching.
“What happened then?” Bobbie asked after I had told my family the story at an evening meal.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Didn’t you go back to the car wash?”
“Of course not,” I replied.
“I don’t blame you,” Peter said. “They might have arrested you for speeding in a car wash.”
We all laughed. It was a nice moment.We were relaxing after the dishes had been taken away, the aroma of coffee filling the air.We had been talking about the past year and, without pausing to think of the possible consequences, I had told them about my experience with the car wash.
The story delighted the children—who are no longer children. Peter and Bobbie are married, in fact, and I realized I had given them ammunition for the future. I could imagine them, years from now, when they gather together and one of them will say, “Remember the time Dad drove through that car wash . . .?”
Other things happened last year, too, because each year has its quota of events, the good and the bad, the sweet and the sorrowful, the trivial and the terrific. The milestones and the small incidents stand side by side, disparate, perhaps, but making a sweet kind of harmony.
Questions for Discussion
1. “The Year I Drove Through the Car Wash” is a —
A) fable
B) biography
C) narrative .
D) legend
2. “It was not one of my more glorious moments” is an example of —
A) hyperbole
B) understatement .
C) paradox
D) pun
3. The word paraphernalia in paragraph 6 of “The Year I Drove Through the Car Wash” means —
A) employees
B) cleaners
C) equipment .
D) confusion
4. Which of the following questions is not answered in paragraph 12 of “The Year I Drove Through the Car Wash”?
A) What subject was the family discussing?
B) When was the family talking?
C) How was the mood of the family discussion?
D) Why did the car wash malfunction? .
5. The humorous tone of this story is mostly created by —
A) diction (word choice) .
B) use of chronological order
C) characterization
D) use of symbols
6. The words “catapulted,” “aimed,” and “shot” evoke images of —
A) chaos
B) warfare .
C) storms
D) humiliation
7. Which of the following statements contains personification?
A) “We all laughed. It was a nice moment.”
B) “. . . the car looked as if it had caught some terrible disease.” .
C) “At the end of the tunnel we zoomed out into the street . . .”
D) “But somehow the gear slipped into drive . . .”
8. The point of view of this selection is —
A) first person, narrator .
B) first person, car wash attendant
C) third person, children
D) third person omniscient