A huge box sat on my porch in the rain. It wouldn’t fit through the door. I stood in my galoshes and raincoat and bright red umbrella and stared. I didn’t remember ordering something this large.

I checked the shipping label and sure enough, it was addressed to me. The return address was from somewhere in Germany. Racking my brain, I finally decided this was my fancy Dyson that I had been wondering about.

My carpets were looking quite dingy and I’d been sneezing an awful lot.

Eagerly, I ripped at the wet cardboard. The rain was now a blessing. The cardboard came off easily, and I discovered a glass tube inside, a glass canister, some hoses, a large pump with an electric motor, and something labeled “Achtung: Mercury”.

I took each part inside and laid them on my ottoman, where each sent up a poof of dust. This was not a vacuum cleaner.

I searched the box for instructions. “Careful Assembly of Vacuum” was just a list of warnings and a handy diagram.

This was a vacuum, just not mine.