May the Force Field be With You

One day when Avi came home from work, I told him that I had been vacuuming upstairs, and since his room was clean (no clothes etc. on the floor) I vacuumed it for him. He looked at me with surprise and said, "I didn't know you had to vacuum wood floors." I said, "Where do you think all that dust and dog hair goes?" but he just shrugged his shoulders and said, "Thanks anyway."

Is it just boys who think this way? My daughters never asked this question, but I suppose that might just mean that they were obedient and didn’t really care why they had to vacuum, it’s just one of the things your mom makes you do. But Norman actually does most of the vacuuming, so either it's not a gender-related thing, or else the awareness develops later, like a kind of maturity. (Although to be honest, it could just be that, like the girls, he's just learned that this is something that wives expect husbands to do, even though it's illogical, like putting the toilet seat down.)

I assume that most people realize that the dust and dog hair floating in the air eventually fall to the ground (see "gravity"), and it makes no difference what sort of substance the ground is actually composed of. You would think that a young man who was interested in science and who even studied physics on the college level would be aware of this fact. But not Avi. I don't know where he thought the dust went. He's read a lot of "Star Trek" books; maybe he got reality and science fiction confused, and thought that there was some kind of invisible force field that prevented the dust from settling on the wood floors, and caused it to find its way down the stairs, through the dining room and the kitchen (which also have wood floors),and onto the family room carpet. Presumably, this is similar to the force field that magically washes the dirty dishes that Avi leaves in the sink, and replaces them in the cupboard. And the one that levitates his dirty socks from the family room floor and transports them to the washing machine. And the one that hangs up his coat. And the one that- well this could go on for some time.

Funny, I never thought of myself as a "force field" before. But I do like the sound of it better than "maid."