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The Underrated Power of a Vacuum Cleaner
I Guess We Can Learn a Lot From Buying An Appliance
My friend’s vacuum doesn’t work so she calls the only local shop that repairs her brand. On the phone the guy tells her that he also repairs laptops and collects antique coins, so if she has any of those she should bring them in. She asks me if I want to come with. I was going to stay home and write but this adventure strikes me as astonishingly more interesting than several hours alone with my thoughts and a blinking cursor. His name, she tells me, is Frank.
Frank’s shop is two doors down from a taxidermist and across the street from a cemetery. The location is marked by a lone vacuum sitting outside on the sidewalk.
We buzz for entrance. He emerges from the back with a blue surgical mask that will, for the entirety of our interaction fall at 10 second intervals below his nose. He asks what the problem is, which strikes me as odd because a vacuum cleaner can only have one problem which is that it doesn’t suck. Nevertheless my friend explains in several short paragraphs using words like “wand hose,” “brush motor,” and “HEPA filter,” that, in essence, it doesn’t suck.
Frank drops to one knee beside the fallen appliance as though bending down to rescue an injured puppy. He is a wholly unremarkable man — white, middle-aged, camouflaged in dad jeans and a lightly stained grey hoodie. Black orthopedic shoes. His accent: 90% queens, 10%…