Thursday, March 29, 2007

El tornado - the story of the little vacuum cleaner that could


"With some people coming tomorrow night," I thought, "I had better cleanup."

I got the apartment building's shared vacuum cleaner, and innocently turned it on, not anticipating the maelstrom that was about to immediately ensue. In a violent outburst of noise, dust and bits and bobs exploded out of the top left corner of the vacuum cleaner's plump bag, forming a brown mushroom cloud. A veritable torrent of dust was unleashed. The hazy dust cloud covered the entire room with every other apartment's dirt. I stumbled through the gloom to the door, only to be greeted with the piercing screams of the smoke alarm.

"Thank God I started with Paulus's room," I thought.

After powering off the dangerous machine -- not yet having actually vacuumed anything up -- I removed the still full bag and took it out to the dumpster to empty it. Out came a mountain of dust, lots of long black hair, and a couple of used contraceptives. I was glad they had not blown out of the bag.

I reflected on the bag's crude design. You practically needed to be a mechanic to open it. That may have explained why it had apparently not been emptied for some years. Only a clever genius must understand why its design was patented.

As I stomped flat the bag's metal flap to close it up, I pondered the vacuum cleaner's incredible sucking power. It sucked like there was a tornado in town. That was it then, its name had to be "el tornado".

* I am kidding about starting in Paulus's room. And the contraceptives also. But everything else is true!

1 comment:

Sana said...

Hi Damon,
I'm not sure if you remember me. We got in touch about a year ago, through orkut and chatted for a while.
Anyway, I visited your blog after ages today and and thought I'd drop in a line. Its fun to read of stuff ranging from vaccuum-cleaner woes to political opinions on the same blog. I had a quite a fun hour or so, going through your updates. Thank you! I've said this before and I'm saying it again, I really think you should compile all your travellogues into a book.
How's all else? How's your peace and conflict studies program coming along?
Do write in sometime. It would be great to catch up!
Prayers as always,
Sana