Never underestimate the importance of a mutual love and need for wiper fluid within a marriage. How many families are being torn apart because one spouse doesn’t understand the value of a clean windshield while the other spouse cannot breathe air knowing that the windshield is dirty?
When I was single I broke up with men because they refused to wash their windshields. One of them claimed that it just wasn’t dirty enough, and that he would be wasting wiper fluid if he went ahead and cleaned the windshield, as if there aren’t hundreds of thousands of bottles of wiper fluid sitting idly at every supermarket and auto parts store in the world WAITING TO BE BOUGHT AND USED TO CLEAN WINDSHIELDS. So he would drive around with all this shit on his windshield — bird poop and water stains and mud and various other fluids of curious origin — and he could barely see out of a two-inch space on the passenger side of the window. We argued about the state of his windshield incessantly. I refused to go anywhere in his car because I would have to sit there looking at the filth and I would want to throw up and punch him. So we broke up, partly because of the windshield, partly because he had this other habit of being a homosexual.
If I’m not careful I can go through a couple gallons of wiper fluid a week. I clean the windshield every time I get into the car, and then three or four times while I’m driving city streets, a couple dozen times if I’m on the freeway. There is just no reason to drive around with crap on the windshield, not when you can pull back that lever and hear the heavenly gush of wiper fluid, oh cleansing baptismal liquid! The power! To clean the windshield of the car WHILE THE CAR IS IN MOTION!
Is there a worse sound in the world than the coughing, dry clanking of an empty wiper fluid reservoir? And then the immediate, echoing realization that the sacred pools of cleanser have dried up and that you might have to drive a whole mile with that poop bomb in the middle of your line of sight? The horror! Let me gouge out my eyes with hot forks of displeasure rather than drive another inch without my wiper fluid!
My marriage is gleefully one that is built upon a mutual understanding of the hallowed nature of wiper fluid. The first time I saw him reach for that lever to cleanse the windshield I knew that he was a keeper. Imagine my squealing delight when he continued to hold that lever back, for like, 10 WHOLE SECONDS. He doesn’t just clean his windshield; he showers it with love.
Sometimes Leta and I will sit on the porch in the mornings to watch Jon pull out of the driveway and turn up the street to go to work. Invariably I will watch as the morning sun reflects in rainbow sheets off the shooting waterfalls of wiper fluid as he cleans the windshield near the corner of our block. I like to think of it as his way of waving goodbye, bidding me a good day, one he hopes is full of clean windshields.