Mindfulness

Going Through a Car Wash Was Like Living Through a Nightmare

Especially if you’re prone to having claustrophobic episodes

After taking her three children to the movies with me, their grandmother tagging along, my daughter-in-law told me she needed to make a few stops before heading home. Normally, this included a trip to the store to grab dinner items or drop off a package. But on this particular day, it was the car wash.

I had never gone through a car wash. They never appealed to me.

I’m the kind of person who either hoses down her car in the driveway or waits for rain. The thought of running a car through the “wringer,” so to speak, wasn’t my thing.

As we pulled up to the entrance of the bay she would be taking the car through, I asked, “Where do we stand?”

“What do you mean, we stay in the car?” she said, seemingly confused by my question.

“Don’t you just put it on a track or something, and it goes through by itself?” I questioned.

“No, we stay in the car and go through with it.”

Already panicking

By this time, the car was moving into the next section, and water was hitting the windows from every direction.

Panic set in as I tried to open the door to exit the car. Even the kids were screaming at me not to do that.

“I can’t stay in the car. I can’t breathe!” I uttered it hysterically.

There was no air in the car, no ventilation, and no music — only the sound of water hitting the windshield hard and the tapping noises of huge brushes coming up along the sides and front.

Grabbing my chest and breathing heavily, I screamed, “I have to get out of here. I seriously can’t breathe. You have to let me out.”

My daughter-in-law, who is basically a calm person, talked me down.

“Put your head in your lap and don’t look,” she advised.

There was nothing else I could do at that moment. My heart was pounding, and I started hyperventilating. I bent down and covered my eyes.

I felt as if I were suffocating, did my best to calm down, and thought through the situation. Logically, I knew there was nothing to harm me — I wasn’t going to suffocate, she’d driven through a car wash before, and everyone else in the car was fine.

But that didn’t help. I was the only one freaking out!

I felt foolish in front of the three girls, who were perfectly calm in the back seat, telling me not to look.

It’s not over ’til it’s over

When we came to what I thought was the end, or almost the end, I sat up and begged her to let me out, open the window, or something.

That’s when I was informed we needed to stay in the car for the drying time. Will this nightmare ever end?

“What! Just let it air dry, please. Can’t we get out of here?” I begged.

As the dryer vents were blowing the last of the water off the car and windshield, I started to relax a bit but anxiously awaited for the process to be over, never to be repeated.

The wrong pool

It didn’t take too long to remember a horrific incident from my childhood where I had accidentally fallen into a pool and, after bobbing up and down a few times, was pulled out by my hair.

Anyone who’s ever survived drowning knows how painful it is. Words can’t describe how agonizing the pressure of the water is when it starts filling up your lungs.

Are we in the Jaws III movie?

I also should have reminded her that during a trip to the Bahamas, the whole family visited this rather large aquarium, which had an underwater tunnel to view the sea animals more closely. I panicked and could not walk through, but I waited at the opening until my son realized I was no longer behind them.

He came back to get me, told me to close my eyes, then dragged me through. The thought of walking under the water sent me into a claustrophobic, hyperventilating nightmare, but there was no other way out — I had to go through.

I’m sure if my daughter-in-law had remembered the incident in the Bahamas, she would have dropped me off at home first!

Can I get past this?

Does anyone else ever react to going through a car wash and feeling trapped, knowing you cannot get out with water and brushes hitting your car? Do you feel they may break your windshield and you’ll drown?

Am I the only one who’s so claustrophobic when it comes to being underwater that they actually make themselves sick?

It would be interesting to know.

I felt embarrassed to have this happen in front of my grandchildren, and I was promised by my DIL to never drag me off to the car wash again.

At my age, I’m not interested in fixing it.

Now that I am fully aware of what caused my most recent incident, I will do my best to avoid similar situations in the future. That may or may not be the answer to healing myself, but it’s going to have to work for me.

Hopefully, I’ll never have my car fall off a bridge with me in it. I would most likely pass out before I could swim to safety.

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