Published in The Clifton Courier November 22, 2017

It’s amazing how the mind wanders.

I love how you can begin with one topic and end somewhere completely different. Like, you might start talking to someone about the weather and find yourself telling them about that time you ate chalk (it tastes exactly the way you’d expect chalk to taste, in case you’re wondering).

I have a tendency to take a lot of detours when I’m telling a simple story, going off on unnecessary tangents and taking what I like to call “the scenic route” of conversation. I believe it’s a hereditary trait, but I’m not pointing fingers at which parent I’ve inherited it from* (I don’t think I need to).**

* Mum bloody LOVED this. 

** This is the kind of joke you can include in your local paper in a township with a population of 1500. The Tinder pool may be very limited, but at least people understand your family jokes. 

Some people find it annoying, but I think there’s some merit to rambling on.  I think it can be a welcome distraction, if you let it. And sometimes a distraction can be as good as a holiday.

So consider me your travel agent. Because I can start with any topic – let’s go with vacuuming – and take it to places that makes you wonder how I got there. Observe:

As far as household chores go, vacuuming is one of the ones I dislike the least.

I tell myself that it is an efficient form of exercise. I like to think that gliding the machine back and forth builds core strength. And the fact that I’m cleaning while sculpting a physique fit enough to be deemed attractive, but not too muscly that I appear threatening (we don’t want anyone thinking women are too strong now) is satisfying.

I love the concept of killing two birds with one stone.

Heck, I’d like to pull off the literal meaning of that phrase too. Being able to chuck a rock in the air and end up with two dead ducks sounds bad-arse. And it would be a handy skill to have in the event of the collapse of civilisation and, subsequently, supermarket food supplies. I’m not sure why I always end up relating everything back to the inevitable crumbling of society, but I like to think it’s because I’m one of the few destined to survive it.

But anyway, back to vacuuming.

So many benefits.

I do like being in a clean room, with the many particles of dirt being safely and hygienically rounded up in a plastic prison/vacuum bag instead of being sucked up into my lungs. Those anti-smoking ads with the lung dissection really imprinted on me as child. And that’s great, I suppose, because I don’t smoke as an adult – despite how cool Kate Winslet looked taking a drag in Titanic. But sometimes I think of polluted air and imagine it coating my lungs like the amount of tar a pack-a-day smoker breathes in every year. I wonder if that’s healthy.

Again, back to vacuuming.

I like it when there’s spilled rice or sand on the floor to clean. I love the sound that comes from the vacuum cleaner as the stuff is sucked up. It’s so damn soothing that I sometimes purposefully spill things just to enjoy the satisfaction of sucking them up. Which, when you think about it, is a pretty odd way to spend one’s time. Depending on how you look at it, it’s either me savouring the simple joys of life or an exemplification of the mundane, miserable existence I lead. I can always get back to this place too – whether I’m choosing to be happy or pointlessly sprinting nowhere on the delusional hamster wheel of life.

Again, I digress – the vacuuming.

I was vacuuming near the bin in the kitchen the other day and saw a bunch of ants. I sucked them up instinctively, but now I’m conflicted about it. Are those ants now dead? Or are they alive and terrified after being sucked into a dusty tunnel of darkness? Will they ever find their way to freedom? Am I some kind of monster for sentencing them to this fate purely because of their audacity to exist within the parameters of my kitchen?

And that’s where the simple topic is vacuuming led me. Questioning whether I was a monster.

I’d apologise for wasting your time with a column about nothing, but at least it had absolutely nothing to do with the state election*, right?

* Yeah. What you just read was a 600-word build up to a joke about how annoying election campaigns are. 

Distractions; just like a holiday.