a midfalls evening wash

[v65]

Scene: Single car garage, with the door open in the Fall weather of NY. Outside the leaves are turning from the normal summer greens to bright reds, yellows and oranges. Dusk is about an hour off and the temps are in the 60's.

In the middle of the garage we have a Galaxy Blue '06 FJR, dirty from a weekend ride in the rain with the local ABATE crowd. In the vicinity of the Feejer we have a bucket of suds and a pile of mirofibre towels. The scene begins as a father shares time with his young daughter and son washing the motorcycle.

Father: OK honey, grab a towel and get it wet in the bucket.

The daughter dips her towel into the bucket.

Father: Good job, now go and wash the wheel.

Father points in the direction of the front tire as he goes and gets his own towel. After getting his towel wet the father returns his attention to his daughter.

Daughter Like this daddy?

Father(repressing laughter) No honey, thats the tire not the wheel.

Daughter withdraws a now very black towel from the front tire. Father decides to downplay the incident, and is amused by the innocent attempt at trying to wipe clean a tire with a formerly serviceable towel.

Father Why don't you rinse your towel off in the bucket and wash the silver part of the wheel.

Daughter OK Daddy, how am I doing?

Father You're doing a good job, thank you for helping me.

Father wets the bike down and helps his son get ready for the wash job as his daughter goes and dips her quite filthy towel in the bucket. Father has his back to his daughter as she returns to washing the bike, he then turns around. Years of eating burgers, pizza and Ben&Jerry's nearly spell his doom as he now finds his wonderful daughter washing the fender of his beloved FJR with a still very dirty towel.

Father No honey thats a blue part! Don't wash the blue parts, just the silver parts OK?

Daughter OK daddy, but why do I have to wash those?

Father, fearing to near the FJR fender replies

Father Because you can reach those pieces more easily than I can.

Daughter OK Daddy. This is fun, I like helping you daddy.

The father approaches the fender, the daughter concentrates on her work not noticing the concerned look on his face. Father gives a sigh of relief as there is not a mark on the fender. As he watches his daughter "wash" the wheel he realizes there might not have been much to fear, as she moves her towel over the wheel the dirt is perfectly safe from removal :lol:

 

[Fencer]

I have 10,6, and a 4 yo daughters.

I FEEL your "pain"

 

[radman]

I would gladly sacrifice a fender, tank, or any other part of the bike if only my 2 daughters had been around to scratch them. Realise what's truly precious, treasure the opportunity, and the moments together. They end much, much too soon.

 

[v65]

Absolutely rad, wouldn't have missed it for a moment. I posted this because I enjoyed Ari's post from a while back so much, although I don't have the creative talent he does. Frankly I wish there were more creative posts about.

 

[Mike-H]

v65....don't sweat it....we all have our strong & weak points.....mine for more years than I care to remember was to go racing & fall off :blink: (crash) :huh: ....so count your blessings.....

 

[Mogambo]

I would gladly sacrifice a fender, tank, or any other part of the bike if only my 2 daughters had been around to scratch them. Realise what's truly precious, treasure the opportunity, and the moments together. They end much, much too soon.

+1, more than anyone can know.....+1, for sure.

 

[FJRay]

This brings to mind my own young daughter wanting to help clean the bike so i let her help with the wax. She wasn't sure what to do so I told her to put wax on the shiny parts. my mistake!! as in her mind this included the front brake rotors. You can imagine the feeling at the first attempt to stop.

 

[Ari Rankum]

Absolutely rad, wouldn't have missed it for a moment. I posted this because I enjoyed Ari's post from a while back so much, although I don't have the creative talent he does. Frankly I wish there were more creative posts about.

And I enjoyed your post. I've got several vivid memories of allowing my son to "help" in various tasks. I'll describe the Exxon-Valdez, I mean Exxon-Pikesville oil spill in the driveway at a later date. The first time my son convinced me he was capable of operating the lawn mower without hurting himself or others ends in a much more light-hearted way and without any EPA invovlement.

I'm mindful of my son's self-esteem. So, even if I know otherwise, which is pretty much a constant, I like to present the facade that when he says he could take Superman in a fair fight, or he's going to go read the dictionary because he intends to win the National Spelling Bee next year, I believe it just as strongly as he does. So I answered yes when he asked me for the 30th time over a few years if he could cut the lawn.

I decided that Mark Twain must have been a father, and that the origins of the story of Tom Sawyer painting the fence had to be deeply rooted in his own experience as a father. There is something compelling about benefitting from another's insistence on doing something merely as a byproduct of your indicating that you don't want them to do it. Indeed, if he could pull it off without hurting himself, I was going to enjoy my son's insistence on cutting the lawn.

So, as I said, I was not completely confident my son could do the job at hand without getting hurt, but I kept up the facade. I decided I really couldn't let him do this unsupervised; I learned very early on that this kid could make himself bleed, armed with no more than a cotton ball and a balloon. There was no way he'd make it through an hour with whirling-blades-of-death without someone to point out the obvious things you just shouldn't decide to try out, "just for kicks".

I took up a position on the front porch and watched him begin. I was really amazed at what I saw. Perhaps because he'd seen me, or a neighbor, or someone else do it before, or perhaps because it's just pretty obvious, he decided to tackle a basically rectangular front yard in a basically Cartesian way. Okay, this is a good sign. Despite many other indications to the contrary in his formative years, now, at age 12, it seemed like the boy was not actually retarded.

But 12 is an interesting age. Kids at this age are capable of irritating their parents no end simply as a result of their baffling ability to perceive and understand and be competent in one set of circumstances, and be completely oblivious of what seem to their parents to be an equivalent set of other circumstances. As he made more and more progress over the front lawn, I had more and more trouble concealing a grin. At one point, he caught me, and actually stopped the mower. I mean completely shut it down. I knew I had to wipe the smile off my face, but this realization came too many milliseconds late. He asked over the amplified silence, "what?". So, no need to wonder about it, he caught me. I feigned ignorance and he started the mower back up.

He stopped the mower a final time after he had passed over approximately the whole front yard with the mower. This time, it was quite impossible for me to hold a stone face.

So, again, he asked, "what?".

This time, I went on the offensive. "Are you done?", barely holding back a smile.

Tentatively, he looked around the whole yard. He actually seemed to be studying every square foot. He knew I thought something was funny, and he was determined to figure it out before I had to explain it. In spite of knowing this, he searched the yard and searched the yard and finally, after much more effort than I thought he'd give to his inspection, he cautiously asserted, "Yes."

Yeah. 12 is fun. He could do a great job of dressing himself, washing his hands, and otherwise looking pretty spiffy. When he checked himself out in the mirror, it would completely escape his attention that his hair looked like wig pulled off the beach after a gulf hurricane. Likewise, while basically mastering not killing himself with the mower, and figuring out an efficient path over the entire yard with a mower, he was absolutely incapable of seeing the cubist abstract yard mural he had rendered with the mower, composed of blades-thin mohawks tens of feet long all over the lawn.

If he had done a basically competent job of cutting the lawn his first time out, I'm sure I'd have no memory of it, and that would be a shame.

Thanks for your post. I really enjoy hearing other parents describe the outcome of allowing their children to "help". Such stories are often hilarious.

 

[v65]

Ari,

From that description I would swear you know my 12 year old! Damn funny!