©June 1997
Carol Jane
Remsburg
Who
Designed This?
Last
Saturday as I struggled to finish the weekly cleaning chores, I relented and
attempted to clean out the myriad vents and condensing coils beneath my mammoth
refrigerator. It isn’t something I gladly
look forward to since I usually end up frustrated. There is a vast area of space behind the metal grill that none of
my vacuum cleaner attachments can reach.
Previously,
I perused between the covers of my consumers manual that came with this hi-tech
model for the best method to clean this area.
It suggested a skinny, long wire brush to dislodge the dust bunnies
every three months or so. What I
discovered was that there isn’t a slender enough or lengthy enough wire brush
manufactured in America that will perform this feat. Over the last few years since I’ve owned this refrigerator, I
have doggedly tried and tried to guide the dust bunnies that I could reach with
a handicapped shorter brush guiding them to my waiting vacuum hose. This is a futile venture. It performs only
as a stop-gap measure at best.
This
trial began no different than the rest.
I have no idea how the dust bunnies multiply and pack themselves so
heavily, but they do. They carry the
texture nearly what one will find in a dryer lint screen that hasn’t been
recently or repeated cleaned out. The
space is densely filled mocking me with a universe of busy microbes.
After the first fruitless tries, I turn off my laboring vacuum to ponder my dilemma. I then have to endure the sound of my equally laboring fridge. It’s trying to suck air through that clogged and clotted mass. I think and know that there has to be a better way. As my mind hops and jumps over each likely resolution, I reject many. Then I light upon the idea. The vacuum works, but I simply cannot reach it. How to adapt a tool?
Hey,
remember, where there lives a small child, there are also straws. So, I connect two together, forgetting that
I really am manually impaired. I slide
them inside the slimmest crevice attachment I have and begin to work and worry
those dust bunnies. Many clog the small
straw Jerry-rigged device, so it becomes laborious. The long awkward process has begun.
The
flashlight shifts and shuttles constantly to provide me with the best light as
I lean, turn, and twist about while maintaining a prone position upon the
floor. Comfort isn’t the issue. The bunnies are screaming as they make their
exit. This is satisfying work. It’s taken me quite a long time to figure
out how to eliminate this lurking evil from empress of purification.
Thirty
minutes later, I turn off the vacuum dizzy with triumph, and soreness already
setting in my muscles. While I’m off to
finish the rest of my day’s chores, another thought comes to me. Just who in the hell designed this
machine. It isn’t much different than
any other that is manufactured today.
Was it made this way simply to hurry the self-destruction process in
order to make us purchase another.
While this is an appealing thought, I don’t think so. The design was made by a man, a man who
would never, ever have to clean it out.
It would be payment enough, perhaps tortuous enough to see this
simpleton have to perform this task upon his own design. Do you think he’d change it? You know he would.