The Kirby Visit

Hello, dear blog readers! I feel like I have been "officially" inducted into stay-at-home-momhood. How did this happen, you ask? Well, recently I had Toodler out on the porch in a rain storm. He was running off some steam due to being pent up all day in the house. A large white SUV with tinted windows turned into our neighborhood. Being the little socialite that he is, Toodler proceeded to wave enthusiastically while yelling "Hi!" The SUV proceeded to come to a screeching halt (literally) right outside of our driveway. If this vehicle had been black, I would have thought I had violated some Federal Law. Out popped a very excited woman whose driver could not haul a box out of the rear of the vehicle fast enough. Onto the porch she ran, claiming that if she could have 20 minutes of my time to do an in-home demonstration, she would win a trip to Hawaii or some other such warm tourist destination. Being the sucker that I am, I agreed. I told her up front that I wasn't able to purchase anything, but her enthusiasm remained undiminished. The kids and I sat on the couch and the demonstration began. I was immediately taken in my mind's eye to the time when I was about three and a Kirby rep did an in-home demo for my mother. The guy asked if he could borrow a pencil, so I proceeded to give him my Prized Sunday School pencil. It was the nicest, shiniest, most colorful thing we had for writing utensils. He proceeded to feed it through the Kirby vacuum. The only thing remaining of this debacle were colored wood chips on the floor. This was the catalyst that Mom was looking for in order to get him to leave since he hadn't taken the hint before this. I vaguely remember shrieking something to the effect of "You naughty dufus Kirby guy!" At present, the rep was enthusiastically showing me and Toodler about sixteen different purposes for the Kirby vacuum. Did you know that the new models can blow air down your drain with some sort of attachment in order to break up clogs? All I could imagine was that if there really IS a clog, wouldn't that stuff just come back up to hit the ceiling if the force was great enough and the clog wouldn't give? Just a thought. The rep proceeded to point out with vacuum filter after filter (about the size of small dessert plates) how dirty my carpet was. A little embarrassing, perhaps. She then proceeded (after vacuuming the rug) to vacuum the ceiling fan. This allowed a fair bit of dust to fall on my newly-vacuumed rug. She vacuumed the furniture. She even tried to show me that you could vacuum the TV, at which point, I insisted that she leave it alone. Nothing like having an in-home rep scratch The Screen. An hour and a half after the demo began, there were no less than 36 dirty demonstration vacuum filters on the floor. The rep began packing up the vacuum. Her driver/aka "Boss" came in and started pitching the sale. I told him that my hubby was out of town and that I was not interested in making any purchase without talking to him first. The sale price? He wanted $2700. I kept repeating myself that the sale wasn't going to happen right there and then. By this time, the kids were both howling and completely unglued since it was well past bedtime. He, raising his voice over the children, eventually talked himself down to $850.00. Still not going to happen. The final "no-sale" deal for me? While they were packing up the Kirby, Toodler toodled all over the dirty filters, which the Kirbyians were kind enough to leave for me to collect and clean up. Little dirty footprints littered the rug. I frantically collected them and stuffed those filters in the trash, but by then, there was dust everywhere (except possibly for the ceiling fan). I got the kids to bed and got out my old Hoover to clean up the remnants of the in-home vacuum demo. I can now officially say that I have been the recipient of an in-home sales demonstration, and if someone pulls up in my driveway like that again, I will be a bit wiser. The Kirby Vacuum might have changed its build and style in the last thirty years, but the Kirbyians haven't gone up in class as far as I can see. Happy Monday, dear blog readers, and enjoy the vacuums that you have! :)