Mindlessly, perhaps distractedly, I sat at a stop light, patiently waiting my turn on this December evening. My eyes fell upon a sign over to the right on a building that said, “Free Vacuums”.

Now at work, the vacuum we have is terrible. It is one of those canister kinds that lets you see the dust swirling as evidence that it is working—that is, until it isn’t working and the dust just sits and now the volume seems to loud and you wonder if it always was this loud or has it just gotten louder when it stopped working correctly? I hate the canister kind. I’ve always preferred Oreck and bagged vacuums, myself. Just keep it simple.

Back to the sign, I thought, “How could they possibly have enough vacuums for any and all comers?” I wish, for your sake, you could have seen what I imagined the inside of this store looked like. Just a smorgasbord of refurbished (that’s surely the only type that could be free) vacuums. The old chrome ones, and maybe an Oreck a day was set out for a lucky shopper.

It didn’t seem real, but then who does like vacuuming? And I have been trying to give away a washer and dryer and am resolved that it will simply cost money to have someone pick them up. Maybe the vacuum market is similar? And maybe there is a government program to help encourage clean houses? Who knows?

Let me be clear, I almost re-routed in the direction of the sign.

Then it hit me. I almost couldn’t look again for shame and embarrassment. And I have barely been able to stop laughing long enough to type this out—of which the only reason I type is because the two people I called to share a good laugh with didn’t answer.

It was a car wash! Ha. Free vacuums!

As if someone would just give away vacuums.

Hahahahahahahahaha.