If you have ever had this experience or know someone that has, I would like to know.

It was something that I didn’t even know could happen. I had never spent a single second of my 49 years here on earth thinking about this and I will admit I have thought of quite a few other catastrophic situations.

Yesterday, I had a very bizarre experience.

I had decided to take my friend’s daughter’s car to get a car wash and fill her tank up with gasoline for her birthday. (It was parked at our house for the weekend.) I filled the car up with gas and then was driving to the car wash. I was going to wand wash it, but was feeling lazy so I decided to zip into the new car wash with the double bays of fancy automatic, colourful, cleaning apparatuses.

The next part of this story makes me feel physically ill: As you are told to do, I drove the car into the track with my left tires perfectly place in the rollers. I put the car in neutral, took my hands off the wheel and enjoyed the gift of an automatic car wash. I may have even let out a sigh at this point.

I was in the soap cycle, with the colourful splatters of foamy soap hitting the front windshield and the big, floppy rollers whipping by the windows, when I felt a “thump”. It felt like I hit something. Then a few moments later I felt another “thump”. I immediately knew after the second thump that something wasn’t right. My heart rate went up and I was sweating. I couldn’t see a single thing. It wasn’t until I felt a “bump” from behind that I knew that something was really wrong. And then there was another “bump” from behind. I now put my foot on the brake to try to get all this thumping and bumping to stop. And then the car wash finally turned off.

The soap started streaking down the windows and I could see. I opened the window. The car in front appeared to have come off the track and wasn’t moving forward. The car behind was directly behind me. Three cars all within one section of the carwash.

Playing bumper cars.

No sight.

Just thumping.

And bumping.

In the hot, colourful, foam-filled car wash.

Apparently this isn’t called car wash bumper cars, it is called “a tunnel collision”, according to the car wash where this happened. The fault lies with the person who held up the tunnel and who caused the crash, even though we were all, hopefully, in neutral and running on a track that the car wash had created. According to the manager, the person in front may have taken their car out of neutral, grabbed the steering wheel or had done something else for us all to get jammed up and thus bumped around. But the car wash never stopped. We all keep moving along and thumping and bumping.

Our friend’s daughter’s car ended up with three scratches on the back bumper from the license plate of the car behind it bumping into it over and over. I found at that the car in front was an older gentleman had turned the wheel and therefore knocking his tires out of the track. He took off before anyone could talk to him.

I was given an ultimate wash to go back through the “tunnel” to get all the soap off. I did do it because I didn’t want to return the car with soap and streaks all over it, on top of the three scratches. I did make sure there was no one in front of me in the “tunnel” nor anyone behind me, but I will admit it was a stretch for me to go back through that automatic car wash, aka bumper car car wash. I am not sure this will be a service that I use again. I did ask the manager of the car wash, “How often does this happen in the car wash?” They handled the entire incident beautifully, but this question they didn’t answer. Hmmmm….

I will leave this to you, my beautiful blogging friends, to let me know if you have heard of this happening before or am I the first?

Happy Tuesday folks. Remember cars aren’t meant to be bumper cars and love what you do.

xoxo Joanna

P.S. Sorry again Bubba!

July 28th, 2023 Update ~ The car wash company had agreed to fix the scratches on our friend’s car, but the whole hard plastic bumper was going to need to be replaced. The car wash company backed out. They told us it is the fault of the person in front who went out of the track. We were all in neutral and isn’t it the fault of the employees who didn’t shut down the system when they saw me bonking the car in front and then got bonked from behind which caused the accident? We shall see what unfolds folks.