Here at the Hagarty mansion, are located many very valuable pieces of this and that. I would list them, so as to impress you, but I won’t do that because I know that you will break in some day when we are away and steal everything. It is not that I don’t trust you, it is just that I couldn’t blame you. So many priceless things to take and, as we are, you are only human.
All that out of the way, for some reason my central assigned cleaning chore each week is to vacuum the house. I am not sure how I ended up with this job but I think it has something to do with the vacuum cleaner being a machine and having a motor and making lots of noise, all the things, apparently, that an average man craves. And in spite of what you might hear on the street, I am an average man.
One part of the job I don’t like much is the survey that must be made of the carpeting to make sure that none of the aforementioned valuables are hiding on the floor waiting to be hoovered up by the vacuum. In spite of the careful inspection, a thing or two does happen to make its way through the system and into the refuse canister. Sometimes, the canister is dumped out to make sure a diamond, sapphire, ruby or gold ring didn’t just disappear and other times, battling through a bout of indifference, the whole thing just ends up in the garbage.
Today was one of those days. The vacuum cleaner made one hell of a racket whenever I tried cleaning a certain area of the living room floor but I persisted until the noise went away. However, fearful that some priceless jewels and even wedding rings might be mixed in with the dust and cat fur, I dumped the canister into an empty pizza box and sifted through the matter that showed up.
I was somewhat pleased to discover that nothing priceless had been removed. In fact, what I found was a half dozen kernels of unpopped popcorn along with five fingernail clippings.
Now you might think I would be relieved with this find and yet I am torn.
Yes, I can try to re-pop the kernels but I am also perplexed as to who it was who took their fingernail clippings out of the sink and dropped them onto the livingroom carpet. Why on earth would someone do that, I wonder.
All that is left to do is to call a family meeting to try to match the clippings to the culprit.
Nothing is simple in the Hagarty mansion, including Saturday vacuuming.
©2020 Jim Hagarty
