Gabe Discovers Electricity

A few months back--I honestly can't remember how long ago at this point, but probably early summer or so--my Mom gave me a bug vacuum. She bought it because it was an "As Seen on TV" product. I love me some TV products! She knows this and, every chance she gets, she picks them up for me and gives them to me on my birthday or Christmas--or, sometimes, out of the blue, as with this gift.

Now, don't misunderstand me here, I don't love EVERYTHING that's advertised "As Seen on TV." Popular or possibly useful items, like, say, the Snuggie--though I am most certainly NOT suggesting it is useful, it is an abomination of ridiculousness--will never have a home in my house (the one notable except is Oxyclean, which I've found to be a quite useful cleaning supply--and it's been used to remove red wine, cat shit, cat puke, and grape juice from our carpets and dozens of various stains from our clothes--and the popularizing of which is surely the late Billie Mays greatest legacy). No. I'm only interested in the crazy crap that was "seen on TV" only be terminal insomniacs or lovers of the assorted home shopping channels during their down times. Silly, bizarre, and utterly, ponderously useless, that's what I'm interested in.

I have no great love of OWNING these items, of course, because they are, as a rule, useless beyond measure--unless their sole purpose for existing is to take up space, in which case they are resounding successes. Nonetheless, Mom buys them for me and, after I marvel at their inherent oddness, they usually take up residence on the bookshelves in my office until the next time I do some cleaning and they are either given to a thrift store or, if I feel too guilty saddling them with something they will never sell, I just bypass the middle man and toss it in the trash.

The bug vacuum, however, did not get the chance to live on my shelf because Gabe was there when I opened it and he fell instantly in love with it.

The concept is simple: a weak, nearly non-existent vacuum is built into a handle, which is then attached to a clear plastic tube about eighteen inches long. It looks rather like a toy lightsaber, only shorter. The driving principle behind this vacuum is to offer the consumer an alternative that is both sanitary AND humane. Not only do you not squish the invading bug, leaving a mess to clean up, you don't even kill it! You suck it up in the tube and leave the vacuum running while you go to the door and return the little bugger to the nature whence it came.

Side Note: this is the CORRECT usage of "whence." "Whence" means: "from what place, what source, what origin, etc." Thus, when people say "from whence," what they are saying is "from from what place," a redundancy. Yet, EVERYBODY says "from whence." What is happening is people are using it as a replacement for the word "where," possibly so they can sound intelligenter than they usually do. But you don't, fool! If you're going archaic, at least know how to use it properly!

Anyway, bug vacuum. Great fun for Gabe when the flies were infesting our house and yard back in July and August. He very nearly wore out the batteries on the thing he used it so much.

Or, battery, rather. One 9V battery, to be exact. And it was this battery that Gabe discovered how to remove from the handle the other day. And it was this battery that he used to discover electricity this afternoon when he touched both nodes to his tongue.

WHY he did this, I'm not sure. I have used this method to test a 9V in the past, but probably not for a dozen years or more. Now I have a much more sophisticated method--I try to run whatever the battery is supposed to be energizing, and if it doesn't work, I throw out the old battery and replace it with a new one. Test complete and no numb tongue. So, he's never seen me do it before. I suspect he just did it because putting things in his mouth to prove their existence is still one of his favorite things to do, and he just got lucky that he put the business end into his mouth.

The look on his face was priceless, and I wish I could have captured it. He was both surprised and intrigued at the same time, and he continued to put the battery to his tongue for almost a minute after the first try.

So I got the camera. Of course, by the time I got the thing up and running, he was done. I DID manage to catch the last time he put it in his mouth, but only just. It's the first few seconds of the video. The rest of it, I kept hoping he'd put it back in (and even encouraged him a little--don't worry, the battery is so dead he isn't feeling but the slightest tingle, I know because I tried it myself later, just to make sure), but he never did. Instead he moved on to doing other Gaberific things with the battery and the bug vacuum. Enjoy.