You Are The Wind Beneath My Wings

It all started last January when we were at Wal-Mart. This should be the first rule: nothing good comes from a visit to Wal-Mart. We noticed that a vacuum cleaner model just like the one the Handsomest Man Alive owned was on sale. On his recommendation, I purchased one for my apartment. I had wall-to-wall carpeting in my apartment. My previous apartment had hard wood floors, so I needed an upright vacuum. Everything was fine for a few months, when coughing and gasping and spitting out dirt, my vacuum died. And the dirt cup in the one owned by the HMA got stuck. We were without any vacuum machines and with kitty litter in use in both of our homes, it was a dire situation.

Very dire indeed.

So I took my vacuum into Aloha Vac n Sew. The nice man there laughed and told me that my vacuum was crap. He proceeded to do the hard sell on a new $300 vacuum. I scoffed and opted for the $60.00 repair. I believed I had gotten the best of the deal, until a month later, with the acrid smell of burnt rubber, my vacuum flat-lined again. The one owned by the HMA still had a jammed dirt cup, so back I went to see the guy at Vac n Sew. He was glad to see us. Reminded us again that the vacuum model we both owned was a piece of crap and backed it up by showing us his backroom where three more of the same model were waiting for repairs. He gave us the hard sell again on a brand-spanking new vacuum. We listened politely and waited for our cue to exit. It cost us another sixty bucks to get my vacuum overhauled for a second time. Now the one with the jammed dirt cup is in his backroom waiting for its turn to be repaired. He's got a nice racket going there, I don't know why he's trying so hard to sell the $300 vacuums.

Just for laughs we got on a website that reviewed our vacuum cleaner model. It was hilarious. The first review sang the praises of the vacuum, but out of fifty or more comments left by readers, most were extremely dissatisfied with the vacuum. We laughed until our sides hurt. “I would drop this piece of shit off of a fourth floor balcony, if I had a balcony…”one of the reviews began. None of us may have a way to clean our carpets, but at least we haven’t lost our sense of humor.