John's Challenging Sweeping Job

We were hurrying last night to get our kids to the babysitter in order for Amber and I to go to a high priest's social. We didn't have much time between when I arrived home and when we needed to leave to drop the kids off. We quickly made them some food and let them eat it. It was getting time to go and so I ushered in all the kids to hurry up and get into the van. Johnathan still needed to do his sweeping chore.

Stressed, and trying to hurry in order to get his chore done before we left, Johnathan grabbed the little sweep vacuum that we have and hurried to get it set up. In the process, the vacuum fell onto the laundry room tile and the compartment containing all of the dust and debris from previous sweeping episodes came undone -- dirt, dried food, paper, and everything else went flying all over the floor.



Seeing the mess, I hurriedly told Johnathan that he had better get out the broom and do it by hand that way. I continued to load kids into the van and I heard Johnathan exclaim in despair and fear. I went over to him to find the in his haste he tried to grab the broom that had fallen behind the refrigerator in the garage and used his weight as a leverage to pry it out from behind the appliance.



The result of his efforts yielded a broom with a severely bent handle. He was trying to straighten it as I got there. Seeing as I gave a talk on patience on Sunday in church, I decided I had better not fly off the handle (no pun intended). So I told him to just go ahead and sweep with the bent handle the best he could. In the end we had to leave before he could get the job done. We rushed out of the house leaving a pile of dirt scattered around the broken vacuum, a bent broom in the middle of the kitchen floor, and the remains of Hawaiian haystacks from dinner decorating the dining room area.

Everyone survived, and believe it or not we let the mess stay overnight. First thing this morning it got cleaned up and no one was hurt in the process.