The ChomChom Roller Never Asked to Be Loved

The ChomChom Roller arrived on a Tuesday. BW had seen it on Instagram, which is where all our problems begin. She held it aloft like a holy artifact. This, she said, will save the couch. The dog, a forty-pound mutt with a death wish for upholstery, looked at it and yawned.

It was a simple thing. A cylinder with a handle. You roll it over fabric, the hair sticks to the inside, you open a trapdoor, dump the hair, repeat forever. The ChomChom did not know it was born to die.

For three days it lived on the coffee table. BW used it every evening. She would roll the couch, roll the armchair, roll the dog bed. The dog watched. The dog plotted. I watched the dog watch.

Then the child found it.

She came home from kindergarten with a fistful of glitter glue and a wind that could not be tamed. The ChomChom was in her hands before I could say we have rules. BW was at work. I was on the porch, Uber app glowing, cancelling a ride I should have taken.

The child did not roll the ChomChom over hair. She rolled it over the cat. She rolled it over the remote. She rolled it over my phone when I wasn't looking. The ChomChom made a sound like a small engine surrendering. Then she opened the trapdoor.

There were cheerios inside. And a Hot Wheels car. And a piece of string that had once been attached to something important. The ChomChom accepted all of it. It had no choice.

I found it under the couch two weeks later. The handle was bent. The roller was clogged with something that might have been Play-Doh. The trapdoor would not close. It had the look of a soldier who had seen too much.

I put it in the garage. Next to the vacuum that broke after the child fed it a sock. Next to the mop handle she snapped in half trying to rescue a balloon from the ceiling. The garage is where appliances go to remember what they were.

BW asks sometimes where the ChomChom went. I say I don't know. She knows I know. The dog knows. The child does not know because the child never knows. She is seven. She is a force of nature. She does not remember the ChomChom at all.

But I do. I think about it when I vacuum the couch with the regular vacuum. The couch is fine. The dog hair is fine. The ChomChom rests in a box marked maybe, which is where everything goes when you cannot let it go and cannot fix it either.

If you liked this story about the ChomChom Roller Pet Hair Remover, you can buy your own on Amazon. Remember, we're BFF if you do.