Mr. Squeegee

Mr. Squeegee

Don’t you think that weekends are a time for rest and relaxation? Isn’t it ok to sleep past 6 am if you so desire? I do too.

My dear old dad doesn’t work that way. He’s hardwired to work, work, and work. He can’t sit still. Even when he’s sick, which is very rare, he finds some work to do. It’s served him well because at 70+ years old, he can do more in one day than I can do in one week! He’ll call me up just to chat and tell me about how he just finished hauling 9 tons of rock. By hand. Or how he manicured the grass with cuticle clippers – all 6 acres of it. In one hour.
But you ought to see his place. It’s pristine, perfect, and gorgeous. This brings me to the story of the squeegee.

As I’ve said before, I spent some time growing up in the country. When you live in the country and are surrounded by pastures with cows and other varmints, and boys riding dirt bikes stirring up the dust, your windows tend to get a bit grimy. Dad is super neat and clean and is the type to put up his tools in specifically marked spaces after using them. They have little lines around the shape of the tool marking their place. Like a body chalk line only they are inanimate objects. It actually looks kinda nice.
Anyway, I remember trying to sleep in as a kid and being in that wonderful state of rest where you’re not quite awake and you don’t want to even think yet, and you just want to enjoy that nice, floaty, resting feeling. And suddenly, you are hearing the most god awful sound known to man. From the corners of my consciousness, a sound which at first sounded far, far away became louder and louder until my hair started to kink, and my eardrums vibrated in a not so pleasant way, and I become enraged at the injustice of having to hear something so awful. What was it you ask? It was dad cleaning the windows. That in itself wasn’t so bad because there were the gentle sounds of water cascading down the glass, and a light buffing, swooshy sound which wasn’t at all unpleasant. But then, he’d have to go and ruin it all by drying off the glass with a squeegee! The dang thing made a sound that was a cross between a mama cow bawling for her calf, and a moose sending out love sounds. And we had big windows, so one or two swipes didn’t cut it. Nooooo, it took at least 6 swipes! And this was all done at some ungodly hour of the morning before the sun was even up! Talk about mad! I’d get FURIOUS. I’d get my bony little body untangled from my Strawberry Shortcake pajamas, and stand up on the bed and glare through the window and try to make dad feel the pain of the poison little girl anger darts my eyes were firing off at him at warp speed. Of course, he wouldn’t notice because he was enjoying having something to clean. He was working, man! That was FUN!

Does anyone find this amusing? Well, now that I’ve had about 38 years to calm down I can laugh at it. I can understand why he’d destroy any chance of anyone sleeping because he didn’t want the sun to shine on and streak the windows. I can understand why he’d want clean windows. I can even understand using a squeegee to get the job done. But I can’t understand having fun doing constant, never ending work. No matter how hot or cold it was, no matter if he’d worked hard all day long and was tired, no matter if anyone was trying to sleep or not, the man worked! He’s a Superman worker. And it suits him just fine. I think I’m going to get him a red cape as a joke for Christmas. Captain Squeegee, The Squeeginator, Squeegarama, Super Squeegee! Hoorah!