The Wicked Vacuum

My father, as these stories may point out, has some real bad luck with any sort of home repair. And not just home repair, but away-from-home repair as well. But that doesn’t mean I’m trying to imply he wasn’t handy. My father was a big DIY guy for as long as I can remember – always fixing the car himself, or wiring the house for new fans, or light fixtures, or building a deck on his trailer. Whatever the problem, my Dad had no problem tackling the problem himself, and dealing with it in a MacGyver-like fashion.

Sometimes, his repairs were too good, and we often referred to my Dad as the untelevised Tim Taylor. Let’s just say I’m glad Canada has free health care.

When my parents decided to start their own home cleaning business, my mother dealt with the cleaning staff and the quotations for cleaning, as well as leading a team into the field. And if that comes off as militaristic, I apologize, but that’s how I see it: My mom, armed with a Bee Mop in one hand, a bucket full of Lemon Pledge in the other, storming the beach at Normandy. And then dropping to her knees and scrubbing up some blood.

My father, meanwhile, stayed at home, fielded client’s phone calls, and, to save money for the company, did most of the repairs they needed done. Not that there was much to repair – it was predominantly vacuums. Mom had a nice little fleet of Filter Queens, Eurekas and Hoovers, which periodically broke down. Y’know, the wear and tear of dirty ass carpets. Rather than take them to the local vacuum shop, Dad would take them apart and get them sucking again.

Ah, foreshadowing.

At this point in time, I had moved home for a time, after having survived a horrible relationship with the mother of my first child. I lived in the basement, and worked locally during the day. I worked so close to home, as a matter of fact, that I could come home on my lunch and eat in my room, surfing the web and still get back in less than an hour.

On one such day, my father was up in the living room, servicing a Filter Queen who had lost its suction, and no longer was picking up dirt. Dad was rewiring the beast, and trying to pump up the motor, to in effect give it, in the words of Tim Allen, “more power! Rar rar rar…”.

I ran in, grabbed a sandwich and nodded at my Dad in the living room, clad only in a pair of grey jogging pants, vacuum parts strewn across the carpet, and headed downstairs to eat. Meanwhile, Dad finished up his work and reassembled the vacuum, then stood to test out the new power. And it was a rousing success, as he had increased the suction by a significant factor, and that fucker could suck.

Oh, how this story pains me.

After a few swipes of the vacuum, which I should mention had no power head on it at the time – having been removed to fix – so being only the long, steel tube that the power head fits into, Dad noticed an itch. The itch was somewhere below the belt line, and since I’ve never had the balls…er, guts to ask him exactly what itched, I will assume it was crotch-based.

Dad, obviously distracted, thought nothing of taking the long, steel tube in his hand and sticking it into the waistband of his sweatpants to scratch that itch.

I’m sure your imagination is fast enough to realize what happened.

Dad felt a huge pain as his junk was sucked into the end of the tube. What became instantly apparent was that the vacuum was now powerful enough that simply pulling on the wand was not releasing said junk. It was just a painful yank, which was strong enough to bring tears to Dad’s eyes. He was in agony, with a vacuum greedily gobbling his boys, trying vainly with both hands to pull it off him, not being able to reach over and turn the vacuum off, since every time he let go of the wand it was too painful….

…and that would be where I came upstairs, having finished my lunch.

I entered the room, and walked in on my father with a vacuum down his pants, pulling it in a rhythmic pumping, with a pained face that looked, to me at least, like a huge grin. My father’s unfortunate habit of using words in their original and proper form further complicated matters when he looked at me and screamed “This is wicked, Jay!”

In my Dad’s mind, “wicked” is:

But of course, to my young and television fed mind, I heard:

Yes, I thought my father was telling me how deeply satisfying getting sexual gratification from a vacuum was. Well, you can see how it looked, can’t you?

I had no idea what was going on, or what I was supposed to do finding my Dad and his homemade sex toy, so I ran out the door, jumped in my car, and hightailed it back to work. My father was furious, and horrified that I didn’t help him in his time of need, and eventually succeeded in kicking the plug out of the wall, finally freeing him from the evil machine with the oral fixation.

He called up my mother, raging about what a piece of shit I was, and once she explained how it would look to any outside sane individual, he realized the problem. That being said, I had already called my girlfriend and told her she was no longer coming to my home to visit me, and was searching the want ads for a new place to live. My mother had to call me and explain the situation, and had to repeat herself quite a few times before I believed her.

I came home that night, and Dad was pretty sheepish. We had one good night of laughing until we hurt, and then we were forbidden from ever speaking of it to him again. So, if you see him, don’t tell him you read this. I have since only once made an off-colour remark about him pushing his snow blower, and the look I got convinced me this was one story the grandkids shouldn’t hear.