Right now, I have a major beef with coconut oil, because I feel like I’ve been lied to. I’ve adored and believed in this product and the miracles that have been attributed to it, however recently I was let down in a big way.
Supposedly it can do anything. Except that it can’t. Like it can’t restore the upholstery on a Harley-Davidson. I know this because I tried, desperately clinging to the hope that this magic substance, this WD-40 of the gods that can fix anything from dirty teeth to dull wooden floors, could fix my problem.
In actuality it really wasn’t my problem but my kids’ problem, which when I realized the danger they had put themselves in, became my problem.
While I was out of town visiting my husband, Ron, who is on a weeks-long business trip, I left my youngest kids in the care of my oldest. At some point during my absence, the kids found the green chalkboard spray paint and decided to use it to make a green screen to film action shots with one of their toy characters. Only they decided to do it on one of the windiest days.
The wind blew the paint into the garage and onto Ron’s prized Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Not just a few light spots of overspray, mind you. This was as if Jackson Pollack tried to paint and had the hiccups.
When I came home, no one immediately told me of it, until I asked about how the weekend went. My middle son said things were good, “Except for this one thing that happened.”
Damaging a prized, chromed out, and very pricey Harley results in all sorts of imagined outcomes. I imagined informing my husband would understandably invoke the same type of anger as poking a bear. And because as the wife I would probably fare at least a Di Caprio-level survival, I took on much of the burden.
I figured my best survival strategy would be to fix the problem as best I could before he got home from his business trip, and then I’d tell him what had happened and how we fixed it. Then we’d all have a good laugh about it, and the boys would get a lecture about making good choices in the future. Sounds good, right? I was betting on it.
I spent hours each night for a week trying to scrape off the paint. First, I tried scrubbing the specks with a soapy washcloth, and scraping them off with the edge of a sharp object. Then I used the all-magical coconut oil, that incredible cure-all, but the result was a shiny leather seat speckled with now-also-shiny spots of paint.
Ultimately I ended up painstakingly scraping each speck off of the leather by gently rubbing my fingernail over the spot, then dusting off the microscopic chips of paint and buffing the area with a clean wash cloth.
As I did this I had plenty of time to reflect. What would I tell Ron? How could I explain? We were set to drive out to visit him for the weekend at his hotel. Would I ease into the story, telling him about how windy it has been and then go from there? Could I get dolled up and visit him, you know, alone, and in my sexiest voice tell him what happened? Would I just buy a new leather seat and tell him it was a Valentine’s Day gift? In what way did I want to face the bear and, possibly, my demise?
Fortunately, after we returned home from visiting him we’d still have a few more weeks to figure it out before he came back.
When we got to the hotel and I began to unload the car I noticed my youngest pull Ron into the other room. As I began to unpack I heard my little guy speaking to my husband in his little whiny baby voice saying, “and then the paint got all over your motorcycle. All over the chrome and all over the seat.”
I froze. What was he doing sacrificing himself? That was my job. I had been preparing for it for a week. I hadn’t expected my son would courageously fess up like that the very minute he saw my husband. We hadn’t even discussed it since it happened the week before.
I stopped what I was doing and listened.
I heard my husband suck in a deep breath. Sebastian finished with, “Please don’t be mad at me, Daddy.”
My heart hurt. I could tell Ron was still holding in that breath because he let it out when he called out, “Shell, did you know anything about this?”
I said I was trying to fix it before I told him and that I had spent every night of the last week trying to get the paint off the seat.
Sebastian walked up to Ron and handed him a picture he quickly drew of the motorcycle seat with tiny speckles to demonstrate what it looked like.
Ron looked at the picture and shook his head. He really didn’t say much about it. He placed the drawing on the table and said, “C’mon, let’s get the rest of the stuff out of the car.”
There was no growling, no cowering, no crying (although I suspect Ron may have discretely wiped away a tear at the thought of his damaged bike).
Maybe organic coconut oil can’t restore the leather and chrome on a Harley-Davidson but fortunately for me, a 7-year-old with an innocent heart can definitely save a situation.
Editor Shelly Cone is still trying to figure out how to tell her husband about how that hole in the wall got there. Send her suggestions at scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Feb 18-25, 2016.