An Open Letter To The Man I Was Rude to at the Car Wash

These things only seem to happen to me.

I like to think of myself as a very friendly and approachable person. But this weekend circumstances beyond my control forced me to be rude to a very appreciative fan of mine, and I feel terrible about it.

Let me set the scene for you.

My car had been in serious need of a vacuum for the past week. While running some errands on Saturday morning I popped into the car wash to check one more job off of my list. But, as I approached the machine, I realized I only had enough quarters for the minimum amount of vacuum time.

"Not a problem," I thought. I've been in this situation before and was confident that I could speed-clean my car in just a couple of minutes. So I prepped the car by removing the mats, opening all of the doors and positioning myself to maximize the amount of time allotted to vacuum the entire interior of my vehicle.

As soon as the last quarter fell into the machine I was off and running. Like the pit crew at the Indy 500, my movements were flawless. I effortlessly flew from floor mat to interior and made my way to the trunk of the car in record time. But on my way to the passenger side of my car, I hit a speed bump.

As time was quickly ending on my impressive speed-vacuum session I turned to find a man approaching me. "Oh no," I thought. I estimated that there was less than 60 seconds of time left to finish my car. What could this person want that's so important? Before I had a chance to jump back into the car, the man caught my eye and smiled. Beaming, he asked, "Hey, aren't you the guy from the radio?"

Now at this point, I had a tough decision to make. Should I be a decent human being, give up on my quest to clean my car and interact with this person who clearly listens to my show and has taken the time to walk across an entire parking lot just to compliment me? Or should I be a rude jerk, but get to finish up my quarter's worth of vacuum time and finally complete the job of vacuuming that I had been putting off for weeks?

If you know me, you probably already know the decision I made. With what I'm sure looked like the face of a crazed madman interrupted from writing his rambling manifesto, I blew right past this loyal listener, yelling "Thank You... Quarters... Vacuum... No time!"

I can only hope this person understood the gravity of the situation and that under any other circumstance, I would have been more than happy to spend some time chatting about how great I am.

Anyway, if you happen to be that very nice listener, thanks so much for your kind words, and I'm sorry. Well, kind of -- My car is really clean now.

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