Paul Rosenthal (Bend, OR)
Vacuuming used to relax me after therapy, until my psychiatrist moved to L.A., because he “had an opportunity to be closer to his kids.” Well, you shouldn’t get divorced in the first place, but you can’t give advice to a psychiatrist. No. They don’t make poor decisions. My new doc is a lady and she doesn’t get me. I vacuum, sure, but it’s not the same. I think sometimes about smashing all the jars of Ragu at Safeway, and then I remember the guy who would have to clean it up.
Erin McNally (Minneapolis, MN)
I got my first Dust-Buster when I was 4. My dad brought it back from a business trip in Tokyo. I took it everywhere: Grandpa’s arraignment hearing, camping, cockfights, and into the bathtub (with the batteries taken out). I still remember when it died. I was home from college and some girlfriends and I went out clubbing. It fell and broke on the dance floor at Extasy. I didn’t let my girlfriends see me cry, but I was pretty upset. There were some pieces missing when I tried superglueing it back together the next day, and the club was closed when I went back. No one teaches you how to bury a friend.
Jessica Del Rio (Albuquerque, NM)
Fuck vacuums. Sweep ’til I die.
Yousry Sharif (Miami, FL)
My family is Egyptian, so people assume that we do not believe in vacuums or vacuuming. In truth, vacuuming is tremendously popular among Egyptian Americans as well as the Egyptian nationals. In our culture, it is the man’s right to first vacuum. I watch mostly while my husband cleans dirt from our rugs. If I were a better wife, I would keep the carpets soiled with sand and crumbs, but we have a big house and I’m not some perfect Tunisian.
Allen Young (White Plains, NY)
What I don’t understand–and maybe I’ll never understand–is how flipping a switch on something turns it on. How does that happen? I know now that it has nothing to do with faeries and spells, but how man ever harnessed the power of lightning–not too mention the tornado–I’ll never get it. I worry sometimes, are we playing God when we should be worshipping Him?
Dorothy Sivic (Arlington, VA)
Corners. That’s where all the dust bunnies go, and that’s where I go with my Shop Vac 261Z to kill them. I vacuum 7 times a day, that’s once after every bath. I wrapped the suck hoze in pink tape that my dad made at his factory. People call him Colt because he brings gravy to work for his sandwiches. Sometimes there are dust bunnies on the walls, but they disguise themselves as cobwebs. I still kill them. My cat eats dust bunnies. We hunt together.
Randal Cavendish II (Walla Walla, WA)
I find it offensive when people in the U.K. refer to vacuums as hoovers. I don’t care about the etymology or the cultural signifiers. What if we were to call our garbage disposals chamberlains? That’s fair play, is it not?
