Copyrights reserved by the author. If you are in doubt, please click on 'Copyrights' and read the details.We can send missions to Mars, but just try and clean a carpet! by J. G. Fabiano It happens once or twice during the tail end of our winter months. A renegade storm comes down out of Canada and drops just enough snow to make the roads difficult. This allows most of our highway departments to close the schools for the day. On these mornings, if you listen closely, you can hear the shrieks of joy from everyone associated with the schools. Especially the teachers; of which I am one. The only problem with this, even though the teacher has a surprise day off, is that it can be all too easily filled with a chore that has successfully been delayed due to lack of time. This year it was a carpet cleaning duty I had promised my wife I would do as soon as I had the chance. Unfortunately, here was the chance. Off to Hannaford’s I drove to rent one of their rug cleaning machines. Near the store entrance I found a large red and white display advertising a rug-cleaning machine with all of the chemicals necessary to make it work. I thought to myself: "How difficult could this possibly be?" A few hours later I would have the answer! I went up to the customer service counter and asked if I could rent one of their machines. The sales clerk answered: "I don’t see why not." Obviously she had no knowledge of my capacity to handle any type of tool more complicated than a pencil. I then asked her what I would need to clean the rug in my family room. She asked how big the room was. I had no idea. I started to explain how large the room was by holding up my hands but came to the realization that my arms were not that long. I then pointed to different parts of the store in order to demonstrate the length and width of our family room. For a moment the sales clerk stared at me in disbelief. She then told me to pick out one of the machines, one of the upholstery cleaner attachments, and the chemicals necessary to do the job. I went over to the display rack only to be horrified by the fact there were not only different sizes of chemicals to clean the carpet but also things like anti-foaming chemicals and deodorants. Since my wife keeps an impeccably clean home and I did not want to create a bubble bath in our family room I decided to buy the anti-foam chemical but not the deodorant. I then had to make the decision as to what size chemical I should buy. I had a choice of four, based on the size of the room. Since I had no idea as to the size of my room I bought the largest bottle because I did not want to have to come back in order to finish the job. Later on I discovered I could have cleaned every carpet in my neighborhood with the amount of chemicals I bought. I filled out all the paperwork, which took more time than the purchase of my first home, loaded the machine with all its accessories and chemicals into my truck and off I went. After I had cleared out all the furniture in the family room, which would require me to pick up some Spackle later to fill the holes I had made in the walls from moving the furniture, I started to set up the rug-cleaning machine. The directions were printed all over the machine. They were simple enough for a child to follow but complicated enough for me to mess it up the first couple of times. The mixture consisted of a cup of rug cleaner and a drop of anti-foam chemical in a gallon of hot water. I used a gallon container to mix the solution not knowing that the insulation capacity of the container was very poor. But, as I told my wife after I had finished mopping the kitchen floor, she was getting two rooms for the price of one. My second batch made it into the machine. Of course I put it into the wrong part of the machine. There were two containers, one white one on the top with another red one on the bottom. I assumed the clean liquid should go in the top part and thus flow into the machine. My assumption was wrong. I discovered this when I turned on the machine and it did absolutely nothing to the carpet that my vacuum cleaner couldn’t have done. Of course I discovered this only after I thought I had cleaned half the carpet. I dumped out the second batch, made a third and poured it into what I hoped would be the right container. I was now confident I was ready to clean the carpet. My wife was already looking in the yellow pages for professional carpet cleaning companies. I turned the machine on and pushed the lever on the handle that was supposed to spray the cleaner onto the rug. Because this was my third batch and I was a bit aggravated because I had already wasted two loads of cleaner, I forgot to pour in the anti-foaming chemical. As I pushed the machine back all I could see was white foam pouring out of the machine. Our gray and green rug turned white and the entire room filled with bubbles, like the set of the old Lawrence Welk Show. A third batch of cleaner bit the dust and it took an hour to get rid of the bubbles. After I had filled the machine for the fourth time, and still not having cleaned one inch of my carpet, I took the time to make sure all was set up correctly. I then place the machine in the corner of my room, turned on the switch ... and nothing happened. Oh great, I thought, I must have broken the machine. Then my eyes wandered to the corner of the room and I saw that the plug had been pulled from the wall. Relieved, I went over to the wall, plugged in the power cord and was startled by how fast the machine could move before I could get back to it. So fast, in fact, that it had rammed itself into the wall making a hole a bit too large to be repaired by any amount of Spackle. Hearing the loud bang made by the machine hitting the wall, my wife came downstairs, told me to drain the machine, collect all the pieces and get it back to the store. She had already called a carpet cleaner that said he would be there that afternoon. Seeing the mayhem I had created, I did not argue and simply did as I was told. Back at Hannaford’s I gave the same clerk the accessories and showed her where I had put the slightly battered machine. As I went to leave she asked me how it had gone. I told her that if I asked her ever again if I could rent a machine, any machine, I would appreciate it if she would tell me no! The End
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