Oohhhhh, it’s so sunny out today! Minnie said a few weeks ago. Let’s go out and clean the truck!
Oohhhhh, I says to her. Let’s not and say we did.
So needless to say, five minutes later we’re out in the yard cleanin’ the truck.
It’s not like we got a nice brand new truck or anything. It’s older than both the kids, second-hand, and it got more body fill than body in it at this point. But every man will tell ya, there’s somethin’ that feels good about just gettin’ the hose out and sprayin’ down your truck. It’s not as fun as gettin’ it dirty, but if it’s a nice day out, and ya get to play with the hose for the first time, then cleanin’ yer truck’s not so bad, really.
But Minnie got a whole different idea when it comes to cleanin’ the truck. She wants it to be all hosed down and everything, but – get this – she also wants to open the doors and clean inside of it. And if you’re anything like me, that’s normally the kind of project big enough to hire grant workers.
Wait a minute, you’re probably thinkin’ to yourself. If ya drive Minnie around in the truck, and she takes the truck herself for groceries and that, don’t she already know what it looks like on the inside?
And that’s a fair question, but what you’re forgettin’ is, I’m an evil genius. When Minnie came down the back steps with one little empty Sobeys bag, and a roll of paper towels and a thing of Windex, she was only thinkin’ about the fingerprints on the driver’s side window, the swipe marks on the inside of the windshield from where I just use my hand to clear it instead of waitin’ for the heater, and she probably thought she’d clean around the coffee holders, where everytime ya hit a bump, the coffee dribbles out and runs down the holder and splashes up on the radio.
So Minnie opens the driver’s door and sits down kinda sideways on the seat, with one leg out the door, to start cleanin’ the windows. So far so good, I think to myself, as I got the hose around the back sprayin’ in the back wheel wells.
There’s three ways to keep your truck lookin’ clean. One way is to take your garbage out of it every time you leave the truck – but let’s face it, you’re just makin’ work for yourself. Let’s say ya gotta take ten extra steps to go to and from a garbage bucket every time you’re throwin’ away a piece of garbage. Let’s say you get in and out of your truck once each day. If you’re takin’ ten steps to the garbage every day, after a month, that’s 300 extra steps ya took. And after a year, that’s close to 4,000 extra steps ya took. Which is probably enough steps to make it about equal to walkin’ all the way to Sydney. So, see – I want a clean truck as much as the next guy, but I’m not gonna walk to Sydney for it.
The second way – and notice I said LOOKIN’ clean – is to save yourself all them steps and find places in your truck to store the garbage out of sight until ya got enough to justify walkin’ to the garbage with it. And when you’ve perfected that the way I have, then your wife could be sittin’ in a truck that’s basically made of garbage without even knowin’ it.
And the third way to keep your truck lookin’ clean is the same as the second way, only ya find ways to get rid of the garbage without actually puttin’ it in the garbage. I guess this would be what your policemen and whatnot technically call “littering”. But because I watch so many cop shows on TV, I was able to figure out how to get away with it.
To commit a crime, ya have to do the act itself, but ya also gotta have the intention to do it. In other words, punchin’ somebody in the face is assault, but if I’m in the middle of a yawn and Cyril walks into my fist, there’s no crime because it was an accident and I never intended to hit him.
Exact same thing with Tim Hortons cups. I drink a lot, a lot, a lot of Tim’s, eh. And what I do is, everytime I finish one, I crush it flat and then I slip it behind my seat. And if ya do that every day for a few months, they start to build up behind the seat. And then they start to fill in under the seat. And eventually, I realize it’s gettin’ pretty full back there when the crushed cups start pokin’ out from under the front seat.
That’s when I start doin’ my best non-litterin’ move. If I pull into a store or a parkin’ lot or somethin’, I’ll make sure I hook a couple of cups with my boot and as I’m gettin’ out, I’ll just casually slide them out on the pavement. Oops. And nobody in their right mind watchin’ that would think I meant to do it, so there’s no intent, and therefore no crime.
Billy! Minnie yelled to me and shook me from my day dream. She was gonna yell at me for somethin’, and I walked around to her side thinkin’ – what did she find? The hundred or so Tim’s cups under the seat? All the Snickers wrappers in the dash? The empty chip bags above my sun visor?
Whuh? I said, workin’ up my best innocent face.
If you don’t stop wipin’ the windshield with the back of your hand, I’m gonna knock yer block off, she says.
Ahh, evil genius, or what, eh?
John McNeil 