SALT LAKE CITY — Have you ever wondered why it is inevitable when you finally break down and wash the car that it will rain the next day? Or maybe a bird will fly overhead, spot the bright, shiny finish, and feel that is the exact location for it to relieve itself. Perhaps it is meant to be. Perhaps it is Murphy's Law. One way or another, the accomplished feeling you have after working so hard to polish and wax your "baby" seems to be short-lived.

But it is not just the outside that seems to be a magnet for dirt, and it is not just the inclement weather or the birds; somehow children are drawn to a clean car's interior like moths to a flame. It must be hard-wired into the brains of children that a clean car is against the law.

During my 19 years of motherhood, I have had six children. Every single one of them has done their part to secretly drive mom insane by undoing the fresh pine scent I take hours providing. For those of you who have never experienced this strange phenomenon, I would love to know your secret. Maybe I am too lenient and should take on a drill sergeant approach to child rearing. Let me explain the madness to you, the lucky ones.

I have a minivan. In fact, I have had several of them (the fact I have six children explains the need for this). But let me back up. At first, we bought a brand new Excursion. It was beautiful; leather seats, DVD/TV, smelled like a dream you could drive around in. I don't need to point out the cost of this beauty, being brand new and over $35,000.

Sodas, Slurpees and candy bars

The first week we had it, we decided to take a little trip to Disneyland. There was so much room inside, plenty to do as we hooked the N64 up to the TV and had a stash of movies to occupy the time. I planned on stopping to eat along the way and never having food in the car. Well, the first stop at the gas station, everyone begged for a drink and a little snack to take along the way. Fine, OK, my husband conceded, and out came little hands, and his big ones, with chips, licorice and fountain drinks. My heart began to race, but I quickly chirped in for all the lids to stay on all the drinks, and promptly passed out wipes for dirty fingers.

Several miles down the road, all was bliss. Not a spill, and there was happy singing and laughter. Can life get any better than this?

But into every life a little tragedy must fall, and that is exactly what happened. A happy little family of deer hopped along directly in front of us. My husband, being the excellent driver he is, stomped on the brakes, swerved and missed every single one of those sweet, little, frolicking does. A quick sigh of relief was followed by yells and cries from the back seats. "Mom! I need some napkins!" Brown, sticky, wet soda pop covered every seat and every little cherub in the back.

We pulled over to find that soda in a car does not just spill peacefully down into a little puddle to be easily wiped up. No. The lids pop off and it flies through the air in a last effort at freedom. There was root beer on the ceiling. It was running down the walls of the car, in everyone's hair and running down necks.

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How kids destroy our cars

I thought my kids were destroying my car, but after talking to my sister, I realized it could be worse. As a mother of five kids, my sister has plenty of stories about her children destroying her car.

But let's not hold root beer fully accountable. Sprite and lemonade are the quiet ones. They lurk in unseen crevices where you think you have already cleaned up. They attract every speck of dust and dirt and paper and napkins when you are least expecting it.

Well, I hope you can understand why I said no more sodas and no more really expensive cars while children are still at home. Let me also point out that any high hopes I had about not allowing drinks in the car were short-lived. Soda graduated into Slurpees. I thought this might be better because, you know, they are frozen and won't explode in the same way. As a word of warning, they do.

But this sad tale does not only involve messes of the liquid kind. How about a nice chocolate bar on a hot day? How about sitting in the car, on the way to the lake, with a couple of bored kids who decide to see if their chocolate bar can fit down inside where the window went down? It does. If you force it. Which they did. Did you know the chocolate will continually appear on the window every time you roll it down and up, no matter how many times you do it and try to clean it off? No more chocolate bars in the cars; especially on hot days.

Dirtiness of another kind

So, along came the minivan. Now, I am not dissing on minivans, they are quite handy and have a lot of great attributes, one of those being that the back windows don't roll down. This way you can control what gets thrown out of those windows when you are not looking. However, this really can backfire on you when you have a child that gets a little car sick.

Yes, it is one of the worst experiences to go through as a mom. If you have not yet had a vomiting child in the backseat, rest assured, you will. Those darn windows don't roll down! Why is this? I suspect a small conspiracy against mothers. Normally, a little fresh air will help if you can't pull over right away. But with a minivan, the poor little kid has to stick just his mouth and nose out of a small cracked opening in the back of a window and pray he can hold in the lining of his stomach until mom can pull off the freeway and get the door open.

Unfortunately, it does not always happen that way, and vomit has been strewn down the inside of the door and along the side of the outer door, as it can't all fit through the pathetic opening. If you're really lucky, though, you will make it to the side of the road and open the door just in time for your wonderful angel to throw up all over your new shoes on the way to your grandmother's funeral.

Let me just say, I think there has been everything imaginable to dirty up my new cars or my freshly detailed older ones: spit wads, ice chip wars, watermelon seeds and cherry pits spit across to land on someone's neck; ice cream drips and broken cones; gummy bears hardened and dried to the carpet; and french fries. We can't forget french fries that migrate under the seats and hold up as if preserved to survive an Apocalypse.

Even with all the messes, too many to name or count, I would never change a thing. Funny how each of these disasters has served as a memory we look back on and laugh at. What would life be like without these little mishaps to liven it up? Well, I guess I would have a clean car that my feet did not stick to the floor upon exiting. But it would also be kind of boring; colorless. Besides, it's just a minivan.

Vanessa Batton is a mother of six, living in Utah for the past 12 years. She is a full-time student and a student of life.

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