Some Thoughts From Work

I've been working on cars, on and off, for over twenty years. I've been in a lot of cars in my day. Having been in as many cars as I’ve been in, I’ve managed to see a lot of interesting stuff.

Today, I worked on a car that was well kept. The seats were clean, the exterior was clean, the floor was clean, there wasn't a lot of clutter in the center console, the glove box was clean, and the trunk was nearly empty. I like these cars. They bring a sense of calm to my day. The clean cars, if they have a clean engine compartment, make for a smooth, easy job. I could be simply changing the oil, or I could be replacing the clutch, but if the car is clean, any job is a pleasure. If I get in a clean car, with a bunch of neatly folded maps in the glove box, I always think, "I could go on a trip. Right now." It's hard not to want to just leave work, and drive around in the calm, soothing cleanliness of some spacious Toyota Camry. I'd feel free enough to go anywhere--as long as it were on one of the maps in the glove box.

The only thing wrong with this particularly clean car was the fact that it had an air freshener. You know the kind I’m talking about. Most of them hang from the rear view mirror, and look like little pine trees. I don't like air fresheners. I don't particularly care for those air fresheners that look flat little cardboard tress and smell like pine. The cardboard is always chintzy, and the pine smell is often so overwhelming that my nose burns when I even get near the car.

My least favorite air fresheners are the ones that look like beer coasters and smell like a cherry- or lemon-flavored fart. Some customers have air fresheners that have a picture of an Ankh on them. I have a hard time with these, as well. I often see these air fresheners and think that they're going to smell like a mummy or a Pharaoh’s tomb. The last thing I want to do is drive around in a car that smells like the inside of a sarcophagus. Plus, Ankhs always make me think of the film "Logan's Run," and I hated that film.

We haven’t had any customers come in with one of these yet, but there are air fresheners around nowadays that look like little cans of cat food,. They have a pull-top, like a can of Pringles, and they contain a little hunk of porous grey crud that gives off a scent. I'd feel sorry for someone who mistook a can of cat food for one of these air fresheners. Imagine if you popped a can of Little Friskies open in your car, anticipating a fresh, spring breeze and all of a sudden your car smelled like tuna and liver or chicken and salmon. And you thought cats crawled all over your car now? Just wait.

Anyhow, back to the clean car I was working on today. The air freshener was not a pine tree, or an Ankh, or a beer coaster that smelled like a cherry-flavored fart. It did look like a beer coaster, but it had a picture of Spongebob on it. I saw this even before I got into the car, and I began to worry.

I’ll admit I’m not very big on the pop culture. I don’t have cable TV, and I don’t watch a lot of ordinary, non-pay television. I don’t go to that many movies, and I don’t listen to a lot of mainstream “Top 40” or “Modern Rock” type radio stations. The last thing I saw that was even close to being like Spongebob, was “Ren and Stimpy.” I know Spongebob by osmosis. I’ve seen Spongebob seat covers, Spongebob lunchboxes, Spongebob Frisbees, Spongebob birthday cakes and Spongebob diapers. I can safely say, though, that I don’t know what the hell Spongebob is, except a sponge with pants on. Actually someone should tell Spongebob that he looks like one of those cartoon pieces of cheese that cartoon mice are always trying to run away with. He doesn’t look that much like a sponge.

To be quite frank, when I saw the Spongebob air freshener, all I could think about was the nasty sponge sitting on the shelf above my kitchen sink. It’s grey, it’s been worked like an NFL lineman, and it probably smells a lot like one as well. That’s what I thought of when I saw the Spongebob air freshener. “Oh, man, this clean car is going to smell like ass,” I thought. Well, it didn’t, thankfully. I think that Spongebob had been all scented out. All he could do was grin at me with his hole-y body and his big, buck-toothed smile. “Thank you, Spongebob,” was all I could think, “thank you for not smelling like you look.”