Jon Carroll has written about his granddaughter quite wonderfully over the years. He recently abandoned the “WPMG” ( World’s Most Perfect Grandchild) sobriquet and gave her the pseudonym “Alice.”
Last month he wrote about taking her to the do-it-yourself coin-op car wash.
Today, they’re back at the Car Wash:
Now, here’s the confession I must make — before I started spending afternoons with Alice [the artist formerly known as World’s Most Perfect Grandchild], I was not so big on washing my car. I know my lack of care detracted from the resale value of my automobiles, in addition to embarrassing my wife and friends, but I just … you should see my office. I just don’t have the love of neat that is frequently touted as a necessary character trait. I started cleaning the inside of the car only after Alice started giving me grief about it.
Grandchildren: more powerful than wives. No one mentions that, but it’s true.