The Columnist Manifesto

A couple of years ago, we bought a brand new VW Passat. It seemed to be the ideal car for B and me. With its antilock braking system and air bags poised to come at you from every direction in the event of a collision, it seemed like a pretty safe car. And since it was bigger than our old car, an early 1990s Toyota Corrolla, we felt a bit less undersized by the profusion of SUVs and tandem trucks on the highway. And it was under $20,000.

But it also felt luxurious. Clearly it's not a luxury car -- you can get the same engine housed in greater cachet by buying an Audi -- but it felt luxurious to me, and I was determined to "keep it nice." No eating scones while driving! No treating it like a briefcase or a junk drawer!

That resolution lasted a good 6-8 months. Then I realized, "sometimes you just have to throw stuff in your car... and who wants to clean it out every day (or month)?"

And I realized, "a scone would taste so good right now... but who has time to sit around in Rude 'N' Slow's?"

I think scone crumbs are the worst. Like rocks getting ground down to sand, they can get smaller and smaller, and still retain their crumb-like integrity, visibly clinging to surfaces while, like sand, finding every hard-to-clean seam there is.

The carpets looked like the carpet in your house would look if you never took off your boots after traipsing in dirty, slushy, salty snow.

There were footprints on the dashboard above the glove compartment. (B sometimes likes to put up her feet when riding shotgun.)

There were newspapers. Newspapers that had been read but not yet recycled. Newspapers that were brought along to be read in the coffee shop but that got left in the car. Newspapers that were still in their bright blue New York Times doggie bags. Empty bright blue New York Times doggie bags. Stray rubber bands from newspapers. Empty drink cups. Empty plastic drink bottles. Bent straws. Dirty crumpled paper sandwich bags. Napkins, used and new.

You get the idea.

On Thursday, we decided to have the car dealer do a full detail of our car, inside and out. We had to bring it in anyway so they could replace the fuel pump on a manufacturer-recall.

When I picked up the car, it looked almost like new. It shone, it was spotless, the crumbs were gone, the carpets shone like the coat of a dog fresh from the pet groomer. The car looked like it did when we first drove it off the lot. I felt ... new car pride! "Darn, we're going to get this done every few months!" I decided.

That night, with absolutely no warning, our area was briefly pummeled by hailstones. I think the term "golf-ball sized hailstones" is greatly overused -- these were more the size of kumquats. Nevertheless, they were pretty big, they fall at about 50 m.p.h., and the put lots of dings on the car.

Clearly God was telling me something: "Go forth and get some scones!"