As a child I was absolutely terrified of loud noises. Anything loud would cause me to freak the fuck out like Rainman seeing a tub of hot water. This is one of those stories.

Since I was mortified of anything loud, running the vacuum was something of an ordeal at the Coons house, my dad tried to solve the problem by talking to me in a calm and concerned manner.

“Why are you afraid of the sweeper?” he asked.

“It’s so loud!”

“…but why is it loud?” he asked.

Rather than addressing my emotions, like an ineffectual pussy, my dad wisely chose to address the thing which caused the emotion, actually fixing the problem rather than merely painting over it.

“Because it sucks things into it and chops them to bits its fan blades!” I told my dad, and presented a number of mauled Transformer guns that I had left on the floor in evidence of my viewpoint.

The sweeper may or may not have also played a role in Crane loosing his other arm, causing him to become the wonky, crippled, “Hey, wait up you guys!” Constructicon. The other Constructicons only kept him around because A) they needed him to form the upper-torso of Devastator, and B) my parents adamantly refused to replace him, no matter how good I was.

My dad chuckled to himself, and led me to the hall where he was sweeping.

“See? It’s not doing a thing…” he said as he stroked and fawned the sweeper, as a misdirection. “…it can’t hurt you at all! It just…”

At that moment, he turned the sweeper on, and began shrieking.

“Oh God!” he shouted. “Oh God, no! It’s got my foot! Help!”

I vapor-locked. My dad threw himself to the ground, and clawed at the carpet in an unsuccessful bid to escape his untimely demise.

“Run!” he shouted as he lay on the floor, shimming toward the sweeper to create the illusion of being sucked in. “Run! Save yourself!”

I ran back in to my room and slammed the door, panting frantically as I braced myself against the door frame, to prevent the sweeper from entering from when it inevitably comes to life. I realized that this all had to be some sort of elaborate prank, like on those “TV Bloopers and Practical Jokes” specials we would watch on NBC. I threw open the door, and the sweeper was still running, but my dad was gone. Surely, he didn’t run down the hall and watched me from around the corner. No! Clearly, he had to have been consumed by the damnable machination in the hall.

I went from wide-eyed horror to a squint and ran back into my room. I didn’t know what the sweeper’s deal was, but I knew one thing — that it had to die. I dashed to the toy chest, because it had enough toy guns to overthrow imaginary Central American governments… and I did.

See, unlike 50% of my readership, I grew up in the 1980’s (I’m looking at you, Purdue), The Children on the 90’s grew up watching Pokémon, Barney & Friends, and The Effeminate Rainbow Pals; however, in the 80’s childhood looked a little something like this:

I rummaged through my toy box for the largest gun I could find. I don’t exactly remember what it was supposed to be a replica of; I just remember that I eventually broke the trigger off from shooting too much.

A great number of red headbands littered my toybox, as one was bundled with most Rambo playsets. So i grabbed one of them, and dramatically tied it on with a mighty pull. I would like to take this time to inform my younger readers that at the time, this was considered a normal thing for children to do. At any given time, half of my first grade class would be wearing camouflage t-shirts and redhead bands like Corey Feldman from the fuckin’ Lost Boys.

I threw open the door with my gun rhythmically clicking, screaming at the top of my lungs as I broke down into tears, and then screamed and cried at once, shooting and shooting.

After a minute or so, my dad quit laughing and came out from the corner, and picked me up. It didn’t help at all. I kept shooting, screaming, and crying. I always kind of wondered why my Dad did that to me, until the answer came to me one day — because that was the most badass awesome thing you could ever do with a little kid.

Man, I am so glad that August and Joe will have kids soon, so that Uncle Coons can pull shit like this on them…