I was sitting on the floor up in the sitting room working on getting a clog out of the vacuum hose, when I started thinking about how warm it was and, gee, was my head kind of sweating? All of a sudden, I pushed on the hose in just the right place and the clog dramatically sucked into the bag, and at that moment, it occurred to me to wonder what would happen if I vacuumed my head.

I figured it was pretty dusty up there on my locks and I was going to shower after I finished with the sitting room, so why not. I stuck the end of the hose – no metal wand – on the side to top of my head. It felt good; I wondered if my roots were being stimulated. I vacuumed another place on my head and thought, “No one must ever know about this.” And then I thought, “I just have to tell them.”

I really wasn’t surprised when the folks in the Foo Bar looked at me as if I were crazy. Foo paused and then asked, “Remember the time you took that online IQ test and scored 76? Had  you vacuumed your head then also?” All at once, no one thought to make a remark about me and the vacuum; they murmured a little to themselves and then Frank called out to those in the PBC & Roadhouse proper, “Hey, did you guys know AJ has an IQ of 76?”

That thrilled me; I knew it would be all over town in a flash. All the snide little remarks like remembering the winter of ’76 (snicker, snicker, snicker) and reference to The Music Man and the parade with 76 trombones (snicker, snicker) and suggestions I try out for the Philadelphia NBA team. And then I started wondering what it would be like if I used TWO vacuums on my head. I can’t experiment today, however, because the other powerful canister sucker is at Mother’s.

Gee, this takes me back to the days when I used to suck up little Fisher-Price people (accidentally) and they screamed all the way up.

Sometimes I am fairly certain my train of thought often jumps the rails . . .

I was all ready to be sitting RIGHT NOW in the car on my way to the fairgrounds with Sydney after the school drop-off, but a few minutes ago as I was standing at the door, Summer reminded me it was 30-Minute Delay Wednesday. Of course it it. So another Wednesday with my psyche feeling like a cymbal that has been dropped on the floor. Thank you very much, East Noble; I find these Wednesday rants so cathartic. I can spell cathartic because I did not have four years of screwed-up Wednesday mornings and English classes. I’m probably exaggerating; of course I am.  But these stupid Wednesday 30 Minute Delays bring me to it, and every darn week I let them catch me off-guard.

It has grown all out of proportion for me, I know. I think it has become the scapegoat for lots of frustrations in my life. I want to incite riots over this; I want to march on the school corporation office and demand the head of the person who came up with this Wednesday farce. I want to be a partisan fighting against The Thousand Year Wednesday Delay. Oh yeah, next year it’s on Mondays. Okay, let’s call it the 30 Minute Delay Regime.

We need codes and safe houses and  . . . blood pressure pills.