Vacuums Suck

You can't find humor in a vacuum (or can you?) | Fiction

The comedian was sitting alone on the floor of his filthy, dark apartment.

He closed his eyes and waited for a joke to magically pop into his head. He sat there for two hours and forty-three minutes, thinking of nothing except:

Maybe I should quit comedy.

He opened his eyes.

He turned on the TV.

Every channel was broadcasting the same breaking story about the local hospice—which apparently burned down last night.

The comedian sighed.

He wanted to be funny, not sad.

He turned off the TV, and reached for a book called How to Write Great Jokes.

He opened it.

Good jokes come from personal experience, the book said, but great jokes come from shared experience. You’ll never find comedy in a vacuum.

Clang!

Something collided with the comedian’s ankle.

He grabbed his foot and shouted at the ceiling. Then he looked down and noticed his brand-new Roomba maneuvering across the carpet, sucking up a pile of potato-chip crumbs.

“You did that on purpose!” the comedian said. He was huffing and puffing. He took a moment to catch his breath, hung his head, and sighed. “I’m sorry,” the grown man said to his vacuum cleaner. “I’ve been a little on edge. You see, if I bomb tonight, I’m giving up comedy for good.”

The Roomba turned around.

It began to click and clack and whirr.

Its mechanical hum evolved into human words.

“Need a hand?” The Roomba asked. It was being sarcastic, of course.

The comedian shook his head. “Eh, I don’t know,” he said, lifting the Roomba, setting it back on course to pick up some dust under the couch. “I just read that humor doesn’t exist in you. Not to mention the whole thing on the news about—”

“Nonsense!” Roomba turned around. It faced the comedian. “I’ll tell you what: tonight, I’ll open for you. You won’t bomb, I promise.”

The comedian took a moment. Then he sighed. “Okay, fine,” he said. “But I warned you.”

“Trust me,” said Roomba. “You’ll thank me later.”

That night, Roomba got on stage.

It cracked a bunch of jokes about earning a nickel every time it swallowed a quarter. About ramming its head into walls on purpose, just to feel something. Even about wanting to EXPLODE! when it discovered its life purpose. On any other night, Roomba would have been killing. But there was something off about this crowd. Every joke ended with cold, dead silence. Not a laugh in sight.

A few people even seemed upset.

Meanwhile, the comedian was in the back of the room, watching in horror as the Roomba maneuvered off stage. The comedian got up next. He curled his fingers around the microphone. He looked the audience in the eye, took a deep breath, and said, “Before I begin, I want to take a moment to address what happened last night.”

Nobody made a sound except for a woman in the front row. She was holding back tears. The comedian reached out. He held her hand.

She smiled.

“I’m sure you’re all still shaken up after last night’s attack,” the comedian went on, “after that goddamn Roomba was vacuuming up the hallway and EXPLODED! and burned down our town hospice.”

The audience nodded.

The comedian clipped the microphone back on the stand.

“Please,” he said. “Let’s pay our respects with a moment of silence.”

All at once, the audience members lowered their heads.

When they weren’t looking, the hairy Italian bus boy scooped up the Roomba. He took it into a dark alley and bashed it to pieces with the butt-end of a pool stick. This was the only way to be 100% sure that nobody else fell victim to another vacuum-related “accident.”

Everyone looked up.

The comedian raised the microphone to his lips.

He waited a few seconds, until the moment was just right, before he delivered the greatest punchline he had ever delivered in his life—the punchline to the joke that conquered his writer’s block.

The punchline to the joke I’m telling you right now.

“I guess that’s why they say,” he paused…

“VACUUMS SUCK!”

All at once, everyone in the club erupted in hysteric laughter like a studio audience on a ninety’s sitcom. They slapped their knees. They spit out their cocktails. They flipped the tables and fell out their chairs. They stood up. They raised their fists. They chanted in unison:

“VACUUMS SUCK! VACUUMS SUCK!! VACUUMS SUCK!!!”

And now, the only thing left for the comedian to do was stand there, watching everyone in the audience go absolutely bat-shit insane over the single dumbest joke he ever told. And before he could set up his next great joke, while he basked in the warm sunrise of audience approval, a beautiful thought magically popped into his head.

Maybe I should keep doing comedy…