Benny Jay: Vacuum Cleaner Whisperer

December 10th, 2009

The dog hairs are starting to drive my crazy, so I get out the vacuum cleaner and start Hoovering the living-room rug.

I’m working my way up the stairs, when I stumble over one of my younger daughter‘s shoes, which is lying on the landing. The shoelace gets stuck in the vacuum cleaner, which makes a screeching sound. Like it’s in pain. Then it stops.

“What the fu….”

I rip the shoelace out of the suction tube and flip the on-switch. Nope, still doesn’t work.

“Goddamn chicks!”

The thing is I live in a house filled with females — even the dog — and I have a nasty habit of blaming them for everything that goes wrong, even if it’s not their fault. My younger daughter’s always on my case about it. She says I’m a chauvinist. I tell her it’s a coping skill — I’m surrounded — but that I’m working on it.

Still, there’s somethings that only women do. Like leaving a shoe out in the open! What is it about a shoe that’s so hard to put away?

My wife comes home.

“The vacuum cleaner’s broken,” I tell her.

“I just bought it….

“Your daughter left her shoe out in the open and….”

She’s not listening. Instead, she’s staring at the vacuum cleaner.

This is serious stuff. My wife has a gift for fixing things. She’s like a horse whisperer with broken gadgets. She’s got the healing touch.

She’s got a special bond with vacuum cleaners. One time years ago I was watching a football game with my ex-brother-in-law in his living room in suburban New York City. And his wife, my sister-in-law, comes in to say the vacuum cleaner’s broken.

So he gets out of his easy chair and lumbers over to the den. I follow along like, you know, this is a two-man job. He gets on his knees, grunting as he squats, and he plays with this plug and fiddles with that plug, and then pronounces that the vacuum cleaner is broken beyond repair.

“Are you sure?” asks my sister-in-law.

“Of course, I’m sure,” he says indignantly.

“Can I look at it?” asks my wife.

And he scoffs. As in — if a manly man can’t fix it, there’s no way a little lady can….

So he returns to the living room and I stand back to watch my wife. She’s staring at the vacuum cleaner and then she starts taking it apart. I’m thinking — she’s lost her mind. I go back to the living room and sit next to my ex-brother-in-law, and we’re staring at the boob tube and the next thing you know from the other room we hear — Va-room!

Yes, yes, it’s the vacuum cleaner. My wife fixed the vacuum cleaner! I look at my ex-brother-in-law as if to say: Can you believe this chick?

But he doesn’t say a word. Won’t even acknowledge my look. Just keeps staring at the boob tube, like he doesn’t hear a thing. I swear, he’s grinding his teeth.

So, anyway, here she is, once again fixing another broken vacuum cleaner. She goes into her zone. Just stares at it. I’m staring at it too. But nothing magical is working for me. I think she goes to another place — like into the inner parts of the vacuum cleaner, tracing it’s working parts to the source of its pain. Me, I just see a vacuum cleaner.

“It sucks,” I say.

I walk to the kitchen to start in on the dishes, when all of a sudden — Va-room!

“It works!” she exclaims.

“Oh, my god — you fixed another vacuum cleaner,” I say.

“Can you believe it?

“Your legend grows….”

“Look, it’s vacuuming….”

“I married a genius!”

“I gotta go….”

And she’s out the door and off to work. I head into the kitchen to finish washing the dishes when, wham, I slam my head against the cabinet door above the sink.

“Fuck!”

You have no idea how much that hurts.

My daughter left it open. Or maybe it was my wife. One or the other. They’re always leaving it open. They’re too short to bump their heads against it — so what the hell do they care?

But, me, I’m always bumping my head against it.

“Ah, jeez….”

I’m rubbing my head.

“Goddamn chicks!”

Please, don’t tell my daughter….