Sidewalk Sale?

There is a car wash I pass on a fairly regular basis while running errands. Yes, I do run errands…quite often, actually. Especially in an attempt to take care of my dear husband, who is working like a madman these days, and our home in his absence.

And since John has called a complete suspension of Home Improvement Store visits for the entire year of 2008, it is up to me to visit said store for certain pertinent fix-it-yourself items.

So, the car wash.

This particular car wash is set back a little off the road, surrounded by several other businesses (a burger joint and a cell phone store or some such), which are all much closer to the road for some reason. I can see where it would be easy to miss the car wash altogether as you’re driving by.

Perhaps this might help to explain the unusual, dare I say frightening, behavior of the man who, I can only suppose, owns this car wash.

Several week ago I drove by this particular spot in the road, and directly in front of the car wash, on the sidewalk, was a man holding a poster advertising the car wash, with an arrow pointing into the driveway.

Not so heinous. No.

But the man was yelling.

Or it looked like he was yelling. I wouldn’t really know, and neither would any other drivers on the road, as we all had our windows up and were presumably listening to our radios, or MP3s, or cell phones, or what have you.

Without the assistance of audio, the visual was rather shocking. The little man was jabbing his hand in the air toward the driveway of the car wash while yelling and jumping around. His facial expression conveyed either anger or disgust, I can’t decide which.

When I first glanced over at the angry, jumpy man I thought surely I was doing something wrong or somehow offending him.

Or maybe the car wash was aflame and he was trying to get my attention to call 911.

As I pulled up to the stop light, I took a gander in my rearview mirror and discovered that the man with the poster was still in the same state: yelling, jabbing, jumping.

Wow.

He must be doing this on purpose.

Surely he understands that no one can hear anything he is yelling. That he just looks angry. That he is surely losing his voice everyday for no reason. That he’s scaring the general public.

But apparently he does not. I have driven by the area several times since that day. He continues to stand on the sidewalk, poster in hand, scaring drivers.

I normally do not use car washes myself. We prefer the old-fashioned “hose and bucket of soapy water” method around here. But I must say, if I had to use a car wash, the angry man makes me extremely disinclined to use that particular car wash. I mean, I’m just saying…

An alternative marketing technique seems to be in order here.