I realized the other day that the box our vacuum cleaner came in … has lasted longer than the vacuum it held.

The vacuum pretty much fell to pieces, after five years, and I threw it out.

A day later, I noted that the box is still being used as a storage place for shoes. The box is standing on one end, in a closet, and a pair of shoes pretty much fits the width of it. Then I stack the shoes, pair on pair.

Which brings me to Boring James Milner. Basically, the above is something that would be written by Boring James.

Odds are, most Americans have never heard of Boring James Milner or “his” Twitter feed.

James Milner is an England national team midfielder who plays for Manchester City.

He is a pretty good player. Perhaps even undervalued a little. He doesn’t always start for City, but he probably should.

What he was known for first was his utter commitment to the game. In particular, how seriously he takes being in peak condition.

And, early in his career, soccer writers in England decided that he runs even more than is necessary, which is hard to do in England, because the English game is built around lots and lots and lots of running.

Milner is known for doing personal conditioning after team conditioning … and then in matches perhaps being more interested (without knowing it) in covering ground than getting a ball into a goal. Or keeping one from getting into a goal.

The Guardian soccer writer Barney Ronay in 2012 called Milner’s ceaseless running “an approach that basically involves embarking on a series of unrelenting sprints from box to box, like a man very stubbornly doing lengths of a swimming pool while a water polo match goes on all around him”.

Anyway, over the years, the notion of James Milner as someone not interested in anything but working out and playing soccer became fixed in the public realm.

Which led to someone creating the Boring James Milner Twitter account, in which sensationally boring things James Milner might, in fact, mull are broached … like “I bought a vacuum cleaner and five years later I don’t have the vacuum cleaner but I still have the box” might appear. If that fits in 140 characters, that is.

Have a look.

At this writing, the most recent entry is this: “Not sure whether to rearrange my cutlery drawer so it goes spoon-fork-knife or to stick with knife-spoon-fork order I’m already used to.”

And before that, after an FA Cup defeat to Middlesbrough: “Really disappointed with today’s result. So I’m going to go home & give the kitchen extractor fan a damn good clean to take my mind off it.”

Boring James is quite popular. The Twitter feed has 382,000 followers, which is nothing to sniff at. His foundation, meanwhile, has 18,000.

Boring James doesn’t seem to have a personal account.

Boring James is not for everyone. The humor is subtle. Some would say far too subtle. To the point of not being funny. Perhaps that makes it English.

But it is gentle humor, too. It pokes fun at Milner but the author clearly is a fan of his. He likes Boring James.

What makes it better is that James Milner is OK with it. He’s a good sport about it, or so this story would suggest, in which he says he would like to know the author of the parody account.

Anyway, a lot of us probably are more like Boring James than we would like to think.

Now I will go rearrange the shoes in that long-lasting vacuum box.