The Twelfth
There’s a red button on our vacuum cleaner. Actually, there are two or three, Each one, when depressed, allows the user to detach one part of the vacuum from another. Pretty common feature on most models, even if the button is a different color, and I wager if you’ve spent any time cleaning a house, you’re familiar with them. We’ve had our vacuum for about ten years. It’s a big ole thing with a clear plastic canister so you can see all the gross shit that used to be all over your floor. Truly delightful. Anyway, for the past five years or so, one of the buttons stopped working right. It’d allow the base or “foot” of the vacuum to detach from the, ah, torso, far too easily. To the point where you’d have to be careful how you picked it up so as to not let the vacuum’s foot crush your own. It was annoying but not a big deal. You just had to be patient when you were using it or putting it away.
And then last week the unthinkable happened. I picked up the vacuum, just as gently as I’d been doing a hundred times before, when the red button popped off. The shoe dropped. The foot fell to the floor and I was certain the vacuum’s days were numbered.
More out of curiosity than belief it could be done, I tried to fix it. I wanted to give it a good-faith effort so if we had to get rid of it I’d know I was doing it in good conscience. I found the red plastic cap and the little spring that had popped out along with it. I lined it all up but could see the plastic was a little bigger than the whole through which it broke loose. It didn’t look good. I could push it in, but even if I was successful it’d be likely to crack or maybe even snap in two. But I had to try. I arranged it as best I could and began to work it in. If this was gonna happen, it was gonna happen with a little finesse.
It took a few minutes, a bit of force, and a lot of luck, but I finally heard that satisfying click. It was in! Firmly. So firmly that when I attached the foot, it seemed to fit better than it had in half a decade. Amazing. I tentatively lifted the vacuum. The foot stayed on. I gave it a little shake. The foot stayed. I gave it a good shake. The foot shook too and it remained attached! Hallelujah! Not only had I fixed it, but I made it better to boot!
When I began writing this I thought maybe I’d end with a “hey sometimes shit needs to get worse before it gets better” sorta thing, But I don’t like that. I suppose it’s true in some cases, or else the phrase “it’s always darkest before the dawn” wouldn’t sound familiar. But it’s always more unnecessarily fatalistic than true. I guess it’s meant to be comforting. But to my ear it rings of encouragement to wait for something worse to come by in the hopes that something better will be pulled up along behind it. So instead, I’d like to wrap this up with a corollary to the classic “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”:
“If it’s a stinker, it’s time to tinker.”
…which isn’t great, I admit. But it’s better than “if something ain’t right, grab a light (to shine on the problem so you can take a look at it),” which was my first attempt, and it’s far better than nothing else I came up with. So go look for the red buttons in your life. Maybe snap ‘em back into place before they pop off in your face. You just might end up better than where you started.
