Something funny happened on the way...

... to the back corner under the bed with the vacuum cleaner extension arm thingy.

Our vacuum is an upright, purple, airplane-sounding supposedly allergen-destroying Hoover. There is a stretchy plastic arm thing that hooks into the bottom, for reaching into dark corners and vacuuming couches and such. There is also a regular beater-bar setup. So I had this arm thingy attached, the vacuum running, and I was laying on the floor and reaching way in underneath the bed to eliminate the farthest, most menacing dust bunnies.

Allow me to explain that if I were the maker of vacuum cleaners, I would ensure that when the arm thingy is engaged, the beater bar would stop. Wouldn't that make all the sense in the world? Continuing on with my story...

I was wearing a hoodie, complete with strings around the neck. As I lay on the floor, next to the engaged beater bar, my neck was suddenly jerked over to the vacuum cleaner bottom and the strings tightened around my neck. I started yelling (I was the only one home, save for the poor cat who is terrified of the vacuum at the best of times) but to no avail. Because my neck was sucked right up to the bottom of the vacuum cleaner, I couldn't reach the on-off switch, which is toward the top of the machine. After much yelling and a few unpleasant visions of Adam coming home to find me strangled to death by the vacuum cleaner, I somehow reached the switch and turned the machine off. I pulled my strings out from around the beater bar and watched, horrified, as puffs of smoke oozed out from the bottom of the machine. The smell was actually so strong and awful that I had to open the window.

Suffice it to say that I tucked in my strings for the rest of the vacuuming experience. The vacuum seems to have recovered from its trauma, as have I.