By Car Johnson
Speaking of carpets, mine were dirtier than a political campaign. The rest of my house is fairly clean, but my carpets looked like a war zone would look if it took place in a landfill. I had an allergy reaction to cleaning them, so I just let it go. Of course, it’s hard to find help when cleaning people take one look at my floor and start weeping. I would have cleaned them myself if I could.
It all started (or so I thought) when I was thirteen. I went to my cousin Rina’s house for the summer when my mother hit her head and decided she was a WWII soldier and I was a German spy. Rina hated any form of cleaning. She kept her hair shaved so she wouldn’t have to bother washing it and she wore purple cellophane dresses to cut out laundry.
Her laziness at keeping things clean had morphed over the years into a love of filth, so her house was filled to the brim with grime and garbage. She even spent time and money to remove her ceiling so that the elements could bring her new trash to play with. The sinks were filled with half eaten apple cores and bits of potato skins, the beds were covered with sewn together paper towel sheets, and the walls were covered in moss and greasy handprints.
The carpets were the worst, though. They had a layer of pine needles that nearly covered the assortment of trash underneath. But, there were openings where bits of glass and used insulin needles stuck out and waited to attack my bare feet. Good thing Rina gave me a pair of metal shoes to wear while I stayed at her house. They almost made up for having to shave my head and wear cellophane shorts.
Unfortunately, she decided I needed a chore while I lived with her and gave me the task of cleaning her carpets. (It was a big sacrifice for her to give up some of her filth.) I got to use a pair of rubber gloves and a gasmask, but it wasn’t enough to lessen the horror of standing waist deep in bits of soggy paper plates and nesting gerbils. It took me the whole summer to clean.
I figured I had gotten over it when I could finally push a vacuum across my mother and father’s carpets without yelling. I had no trouble cleaning carpets until I moved out on my own and bought my current home. The moment I tried to vacuum it, I broke out in hives from head to toe and had to bathe in calamine lotion for three hours. After a while, even rubbing my feet too much of the carpet brought on a reaction.
I was forced to walk on stilts until my floor was dirty enough to form a barrier so I could step on it without ending up looking like a giant lumpy strawberry. I was content to just let the carpet continue to get dirtier and dirtier, but a friend of mine said I should mention my carpet cleaning phobia to my court appointed therapist, Dr. Fred Macy.
Macy told me I needed to face my fears and stop hiding under filth and smashed takeout boxes. He said that since I was a bit unconventional, I should take an unconventional approach to my treatment and talk to my carpet. I went home and told my carpet how much I wished it would let me clean it without causing a breakout. I started buying it little gifts, like a coffee table book on the history of shag, and pretty samples from the carpet store down the street. I even built an altar out of old rugs and sacrificed a few carpet tacks.
It all failed miserably. My offerings did not appease the carpet cleaning imp lodged in my subconscious and my next attempt at cleaning brought on the biggest breakout since the Black Plague. I would have been content to give up and walk on my protective layer of filth forever, but the state health department said otherwise. They got all bent out of shape and called my carpet a “health hazard” and “frightening.”
They forced me to clean it up or they would condemn the whole place and I’d have to move back to my parent’s house. I figured that my mind wouldn’t react if someone else did the cleaning, so I set out to find if I could find someone to rescue me from having to move into mother’s sewing closet.
The first company I called sent over a van full of people with masks, shovels and every type of cleaning instrument know to man. They vowed to be able to clean anything from mudslides to murder scenes. I guess my carpet wasn’t one of the things in between. Two minutes after they arrived, I heard screams and muttered prayers as a horde of cleaning people burst from my house and ran crying back to their van.
The word about my carpet spread like wildfire and no cleaning company or maid service in existence would return my calls after that. I had to resort to perusing the classifieds and calling up college students who advertised their house cleaning services (and had no clue about the horror that was my carpet). I felt sorry for them as they sobbed in fright and stumbled down my front steps, but there was still the chance that at least one of them might be up to a challenge.
Once again, the word spread and my house became known to any sort of cleaning professional as “The Wasteland.” The only people who came anymore were the ones who thought my carpet was some sort of urban legend or the ones who wanted to take pictures to prove that they had come.
I nearly gave up after that, but then I heard that the local university had a crazy new game show for cable access called “You Must be Certifiable.” It was one of those ones where people did insane things for the amusement of others and the chance at a cash prize. I volunteered the cleaning of my carpet as one of the tasks and they jumped at the chance.
Still, I figured the contestants would take one look at my carpet and quit the show, but they seemed ecstatic to tackle my floors. It’s amazing what people will do if they have a camera in their face. What posers. Well, at least I was getting free cleaning service.
It took six months, but my carpet finally got clean. They carted away crates of trash, but the biggest surprise came the deeper they went. Everything from roaches to rabbits had somehow found their way into the filth in my carpet. They lived under the walkable layer of trash and lived off of old bits of dropped food and tomatoes that had grown from the seeds of random slices that fell from my BLTs and salads. Good thing I don’t like fruit.
The carpet looked o.k. if you ignored the lingering grime and smell of rotten landfill. They had to pull the whole thing up and throw it away. And guess what? There was another carpet underneath! This one was fancy and made out of musk ox fur. It had been protected from the filth by the other carpet and looked brand new. I would have been thrilled if I wasn’t allergic to musk ox.
At least now I knew why I had broken out whenever I tried to clean my carpet. I had the musk ox carpet pulled up and sent to my sister, who’s just as allergic as I am. It was payback for her latest attempt on my life. (She tried to burn me to death with a pocket magnifying glass and ruined my favorite shirt.)
I bought a carpet from my Uncle Frank, a bright green shag that he had inherited from his late brother Phil. I clean this one every chance I get, but I leave a little corner covered in trash in honor of my old one. I sort of miss it. It had character, even if it did smell like my grandmother after she decided that she was too old to bother bathing.
Join the Car Johnson Rocks Facebook group!
Wanna talk to Car? Email him at: Car_Johnson_Rocks@hotmail.com
