Looking for Trouble

Kids can turn almost anything into a weapon. It's one of those laws of nature written deep in the soul, a law true for any kid, of any country, of any time since kids were first running around with sticks.

You don't hear very much about cave-children. That's probably because they all were running around with sticks and ended their short lives before any historian could get a chance to write about them. The ones who survived became cave-men and cave-women who had learned the first lesson of being human: never give anything to a kid if he might even remotely hurt himself with it.

Sadly, after the cave-people we all started ignoring this and so kids run around to this day with sticks, rocks, firecrackers and worse. Our cave-grandparents would be aghast.

Of course, it is impossible to entirely remove kids from harm's way, and we Powells found many exciting and creative ways to get in harm's way on our own. The barn continued to be the Aladdin's Cave of sharp metal tools, high ladders, and shaky catwalks. The trampoline offered various thrills including mid-air collisions and fancy somersaults over the side. Putting a Zip-line from the deck to the tree across the yard ended in a few epic bruises. Tree-climbing was a class by itself.

And yet none of us sustained more serious injury than a few broken bones and one or two cuts that needed more than Antiseptic and a Band-aid. If kids are assigned Guardian angels we must have upped the employment rate by ten percent. At least.

But it's not like we didn't try to turn innocent household items into weapons. I remember standing at the top of the stairs and throwing a plastic clothes hamper down upon my younger sister Sarah, who fell underneath the onslaught screaming to Mom that I was trying to kill her. I don't remember my exact motives – I was six – but I think that might have been exaggerating things. It was probably curiosity, for all I know.

Another time our oldest brother Mike had left his soccer cleats among the crowds of shoes by the back door; it was an error of judgment to leave any personal property by the back door but especially anything with spikes on them. I don't know if it was Rob or Bill who found the cleats but whoever it was had an inspirational flash worthy of Da Vinci. Imagine sitting down in your chair at dinner straight onto a turned-up pair of soccer cleats and you'll understand why the originator of the idea chose to remain anonymous.

In a kid's storehouse of mischief, however, clothes hampers and soccer cleats are peanuts compared to some of the high-class weaponry hidden around the house. And the one that comes to my mind is, of all things, the vacuum cleaner.

It was a rainy Saturday afternoon. Most high-class weaponry stories begin like this. If you removed rainy Saturday afternoons from the calender you could avoid quite a high percentage of mischief from a kid's weekly planner. But God gives creativity every possible chance. So it was Saturday, after the hour of noon, and raining.

“I'm so bored.”

Somebody has to say that, right? In this case, Barbara.

“Yeah. Me too,” from Sarah. The stage is set for mischief. Enter Mom, who picks her way through the litter of wooden blocks on the rug and opens the closet and puts the vacuum cleaner inside and shuts the door. Ignorant of the chain of mayhem she has touched off, Mom picks up a few of the blocks and kisses her daughters on the head. The daughters play dumb. As soon as Mom leaves, the mayhem begins to escalate, quickly.

“Get the vacuum!” Barbara whispers, as she peeks around the doorway to the family room to make sure Mom has left backstage. Mom has gone upstairs to check on the sleeping Twins. All systems clear, Captain. Engage.

Sarah tugs the shiny purple Hoover onto the family room floor. Its lower half isn't very interesting, just a flat head to suck up dirt from the rug, no real potential, sorry sonny. The long plastic tube reaching out from the back like the tentacle of some slimy sea monster, on the other hand– that's talent.

Barbara plugs in the cord. Sarah flips the switch. The sea-monster tentacle roars to life.

Now, Barbara and Sarah had both seen the vacuum in action before. They had seen Mom work up and down the room with the purple thing inhaling crumbs, guzzling cat hairs, and scooping dust-bunnies to their dooms. At those times the vacuum was an ordinary, if noisy, part of the background scenery. But suddenly here was the purple Hoover alive and well and in their grasp! They looked at each other gleefully. If glee is a good sign for mayhem there was going to be a lot of it.

Sarah began the mayhem on a strong note. “Let me hold it,” she said.

“One minute,” Barbara answered, which translates into 'I'm going to do this until you physically make me stop' in the Kids' Pocket Dictionary. “Look! We can pick up the blocks with this!”

She pushed the wheezing nozzle among the blocks and captured one. She waved it triumphantly in the air. “I got one! I got one!” she screamed, and with a flick of the wrist sent the wooden cube whizzing across the room until it smacked against the wall and disappeared behind the couch.

The cat, whose name was The Cat (not for lack of possible names but because there were too many names to agree on except the most obvious) looked up and yawned.

'Let me hold it,” Sarah persisted, as she yanked on the lower accordion-folded end of the tube. Barbara payed no attention and kept sucking up the helpless blocks and winging them behind the couch.

The Cat watched from his position on the armchair. He was a big striped tabby, a good natured animal who liked to sit and observe everything with the calm indifference of the scientist in his laboratory or the psychiatrist in his study. No doubt these two children with the vacuum were an interesting case. The Cat observed, eyes half-shut.

“It's my turn!” Sarah said.

“One minute!”

“My turn!”

“One minute!”

With a flash of genius Sarah bent her part of the tube. The wheezing nozzle stopped sucking blocks. Barbara, faced with the terrible choice between surrendering the tube or trying to suck up blocks with something that wouldn't suck, at last gave in. Sarah took the tube. Glee ran high.

The Cat licked his paw meditatively. In his experience The Kids (he thought of them all like that, because he didn't care) were generally harmless, and they would even be nice enough to stroke your tummy or give you all the attention you wanted if you chased a little bit of string around the room.

It hurt a grown cat's pride to do it, of course, but The Cat had to pretend he was interested once in a while. He knew which side his bread was buttered.

The Kids were now right next to the armchair. Sarah tried the block-sucking routine but discovered it was not as fun as she thought it would be. Plus, she liked being original. Looking around the family room her eyes landed smack on The Cat. The wheels turned in her mind.

“Barbara,” she whispered, “get The Cat.”

“What? I can't hear you.”

“The Cat. Pick up The Cat. I'm going to suck in his tummy.”

That sentence means exactly what it says, and unfortunately The Cat wasn't paying attention. Before he could say “Mew!?!” he was in Barbara's strong grip and face-to-face with the business end of a hungry Hoover. For an awful instant Sarah held the tube mere inches away from the tabby-striped tummy. Then she pounced.

If there is a sign somewhere or other which lets you know when you cross from Mayhem into Pandemonium, it must have been right there in the family room. There are few things more horrible than the terrified yeowlings of a cat whose tummy is being sucked in, and after a couple vigorous kicks he was out of Barbara's hands and bounding across the furniture which stood between him and the door. On his way out he knocked over two lamps and a small coffee table. They could hear him scramble upstairs to find some place to lick his tummy back into shape and meditate on Fate.

The Kids put the vacuum cleaner away. Even they knew when enough was enough.