ShopVacs are cool. Like bowties.
I got into watching new episodes of the British sci-fi show Doctor Who this past year. Blame my brother. No, blame my mother. She’s the one who raised me on recordings of Star Trek: The Original Series and the British show The Avengers (the show starring Patrick MacNee and Diana Rigg that had nothing to do with superpowers). Doctor Who is basically a cross of those two, with better special effects.
In the most recent two seasons, the title character (who’s actually just “The Doctor”) is constantly defending his right to wear a bowtie. He says “bowties are cool” with an inimitable (by me) British accent and a slight flair for the ridiculous that only he can pull off. It amuses me to no end.
I bought a ShopVac this weekend in order to do my cleaning. ShopVacs are cool, you know. It was also cheap and made sense, for me, since I have carpet and a need to vacuum out my little car sometimes. Ever tried vacuuming a car with an upright? It only works if it has the little attachments with it that turn it into half-upright, half-snake-hose. And the snake-hose is never long enough to reach the floor of the middle seat!
So I stood in Wal-Mart for a little while on Sunday night, debating what size ShopVac to buy. They come in teeny (1.5 gallons), medium (5-ish gallons) and ridiculous (8-12 gallons). I almost bought the teeny one, but the medium one had a longer snake-hose and seemed overall more practical.
Good thing I did. The snake-hose is perfect and the extra extender things make it act just like a regular canister vacuum. You know, those silly vacuums that look like evil sci-fi aliens and cost a gajillion bucks.
Just try telling me that doesn’t look like something that hates bowties.
So I quick unpacked it from the carton and, putting it together with only one slight mishap in which my finger lost against a hard plastic thing, I tested it out on three square feet next to my kitchen counter. Voila, no more sandwich crumbs! But it was about 9:30 at night, so I didn’t figure my neighbors would appreciate prolonged vacuuming at that hour.
No, I decided to vacuum Monday afternoon. After I’d already goofed off on computer, gone swimming at the YMCA, done laundry, run errands, filed papers, cooked supper and washed dishes. I had an early supper. It was delicious. It involved mac’n’cheese, but no guacamole this time.
And the vacuum made all the little remnants of workaday lunches go away. It also displaced the large kitchen rug with its suction. I had to plant my feet firmly on the rug to keep it from getting eaten up, or at least nibbled on, by my new alien friend.
I proudly showed my new home appliance to my cousins, who arrived that evening for a movie fest. I also mentioned it at work as one of the highlights of my weekend. A fellow coworker, also a young person on his own, responded that he’d bought a Dirt Devil this weekend for his home maintenance.
I pity him and his half-useful, non-electric pseudo-appliance. Also his possession of too many dashes.
Because in this story, alien > devil. And Dirt Devil : ShopVac :: tie : bowtie.
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