"Honey, do you think you could come over and help me with something?" said my mother. She lived less than three miles from us, a very quick trip and not inconvenient.
"Sure, what's up?"
"I seem to have a little problem. I'll explain when you get here. Could you please hurry? I'm in my bedroom."
??
"Okay, be there in a minute."
I load the little ones in the car, as it is early in the day and the big ones are still at school, and make the quick trip to my mom's house. Unload the little ones, and go in to look for Mom.
"I'm in here!" shouts a muffled voice.
I open the door to her bedroom and find her sprawled on the floor in front of her dresser. The phone from the dresser is beside her. And for some strange reason, it looks like she might be using the vacuum for a pillow. It doesn't look very comfortable, actually.
"Could you get some scissors?"
???
Here's what went down: Mom was using the hose attachment on the vacuum to clean under her dresser. She leaned just a LEETLE too close to the rotating brush of the vacuum and...
ZZZZUUUPPPP!
It sucked up her hair.
The hair was burned and matted, and wrapped very tightly around the brush. Her scalp was very sore. She had the presence of mind to pull the plug to keep the vacuum from sucking in the rest of her hair, and was able to reach the phone to call me as well. But I guess it would be pretty hard to walk through the house with a vacuum attached to your head to find a pair of scissors.
She cut off the scraggly crispy hair, and her 'do was a little lopsided for a while until it grew back.
"Well, I guess that's something I won't try a second time." Wisdom from my mother.
Four-year-old Luke Skywalker learned an entirely different lesson:
Given ample opportunity, the vacuum WILL try to eat you.
He had always been afraid of it. Scampered from the room every time I turned it on. Made sure nothing he cared about was on the floor and in danger of being "disappeared" by the evil beast.
And now his worst nightmare had come true.
There was his grandma, on the floor, valiantly fighting for her life.
Fast forward nine years: Luke Skywalker is thirteen now.
And he still scampers from the room.
Let's hope there's no custodial work in his future. And that his future wife likes to vacuum.
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