SPOOKY, SLIGHTLY CREEPY TIKTOK

I hate cleaning gutters, which, apparently, TikTok knows. Here’s my spooky, slightly creepy story of how I discovered that.

It’s the time of year, before rains turn to drain-clogging ice, to clear dead leaves and fir needles choking the eavestroughs on our house’s high, steep roof. It’s a dangerous, but necessary job, and last year I learned a trick from my son-in-law, Troy. For years, I’d cleaned them by inching along the roof’s edge on hands and knees, secured with a safety harness and inch-thick rope, reaching down to scrape out debris with a putty knife. Troy said, “Why don’t you just use a leaf blower?” (I can’t recall if he added, “you dummy.”)

So last year, that’s what I did and it was, indeed, way easier. It’s what I would do again this year.

Last night I sat up late, walking through my plan for the morning. I’d need to haul up the ladder to the roof several buckets of stuff – gloves, rags, three bags of zinc sulphate to kill moss, harness and rope, a gallon of roofing tar to redo some repairs, a few hand tools, and the leaf blower. (And my cell phone, in case I got in trouble and ended up dangling over the edge and had to summon my wife to rescue me.) I did not want to climb the ladder more than once; it’s the scariest part – getting off the ladder onto the roof, before I can secure my safety harness to an anchor bolted solidly up top.

When I’d finally worked through my plan, I decided to relax before bed with a few minutes of mindless, 15-second videos on TikTok. I downloaded the app a few months ago, though I’ve never created an account or posted anything. But right from the start, my feed has been an addictive mix of guys catching gigantic fish, skiing down near-vertical mountains, diving off insanely-high cliffs, and surfing ginormous waves; weird animal encounters – usually with some hapless tourist risking death with bears or alligators; pretty girls doing what those far-younger than me recognize as dancing; car crashes; the occasional Karen tantrums; a few political rants; and, for some reason, lots of videos of macho men cutting down big trees. What’s not to like? Like I said: addictive.

Just a couple more, I said to myself. That’s when the short video appeared, proclaiming “hands down best way to clean gutters,” with a guy blasting his eavestrough with a leaf blower.

Okay, so that’s a little weird, I thought, especially since I seldom saw home repairs on my TikTok feed. But when I noticed the source of the video, wayneshomeservice.com #MN, I knew it was definitely time for bed.

Maybe that’s the future, when apps will read our minds and deliver the “hands down best way” to solve whatever unpleasant chore is before us. Maybe, somehow, I got the beta version app of just that. After all, I successfully cleaned our gutters today, and can vouch for a leaf blower being the hands down best way.

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