Car Wash

Since Sarah is now on the JV cheerleading squad, summer means the start of fundraising season.  This summer, the cheer squad will be spending select Saturday's washing cars to raise money for their competition fees and expenses.  Saturday was the first one and Sarah volunteered for it.  I volunteered to be a parent supervisor for the second half of the day.

Sarah had to be there at 8:30 to start setting things up and getting ready for the car wash to start at 9:00, which was fine because Alison had to be at school at the same time for a girl scout outing.  Kris and I took the opportunity to get errands done before I had to go sit and watch the girls wash cars.  We drove past them around 10:30 or so and saw Sarah holding a sign on a street corner about a block away, and as we drove through the stoplight at the intersection we saw some bad news.  There was another car wash being held right around the corner from them.  This one was FREE.  It was being held by the local Baptist Church, for whatever reason. 

I thought that was pretty crummy to do to a group of kids who were trying to raise money for their team.  But I told Kris, anyone who was going to pull in to have their car washed by a group of high school girls was doing it to support the team, not because they wanted a first class car wash.  Personally, if I was choosing between the two, I would go to the cheerleader one.  I don't trust the Baptists, but that's just me.  They are sort of weird, and I would question why they are doing it for free.  If they want to do it as some sort of service to the community, I think there are much better ways to help people than by washing their cars.  So like I said...  WEIRD!

When I got there around noon, they were doing pretty well.  There was a steady stream of cars, one or two at a time.  And after sitting there for three hours, I thought the girls did pretty good.  Twice there was a stretch of about 10 minutes or so when there wasn't a car being washed.  The girls did have a few people drive in and stiff them, presumably because they thought the girls were part of the Baptist project going on around the corner.  But overall they made pretty well.  They netted $625 for the day.  Who knows how much more they would have gotten had the Baptists not been there taking business from them.