Things I Found In My Car

This morning I did one of those quick car cleanings - you know the kind you do lightning-fast because someone is going to be sitting in your car in a second and you just remembered you haven't cleaned it out since 1992? Yeah, well I was driving myself and my friend Amy to yoga and I had something like 43 seconds before she came over so I decided to do a quick sweep of the back of the van. These are some of the things I found: a can of chicken noodle soup (?), three water bottles in various stages of "empty" (or "full" if you're an eternal optimist), four large sticks, a huge leaf that had dried up and gone crispy and fell apart in many pieces as I removed it, a green jacket, a broken pink purse, a juice pouch missing its straw, two DVDs with no covers (Enchanted and The Bee Movie, if you wanted to know), and a "Hangman" notepad with a half-finished game on it. That was just in a few seconds. Often I find a McDonald's cup with some type of pop in it that has actually corroded the bottom of the cup and is now sitting in its own puddle of muck in one of the (13 or so) cupholders. I've found sticky pennies, petrified french fries, a coupon for a Teriyaki joint long past its expiration date, dirty socks, forgotten video games and Starbucks bags with bits of butterhorn still in them. That's the trouble with a minivan. You can spit and polish the front and never lay eyes (or hands, or body) in the cavernous back, which is only occupied by those mysterious small people. Which could explain why I found ski gloves back there in July and a sand bucket in December. For all I know, there could be an actual, living child hiding in the back of my van and I wouldn't know until I was surprised by the little moppet popping out at a stoplight. No wonder women my age lust for a smaller, more compact, faster, sleeker, shiny sports car. It's not for show. It just has less space for kid clutter. Oh yes, someday when I get my pink, 1957 T-bird, there will be nary a french fry on the floormats. Of course, by the time I get that car, I won't be eating french fries. But there might be an errant can of Ensure rolling around the back seat.