Toaster

I spent the day with my father, going through old pictures and dating them.  It was kind of a neat thing to find their ornate and beautiful baptismal certificates, confirmation Bibles, marriage license, and other items that my mother had tucked away.  But when dinner time came, I remembered to steer my father away from making toast for the noon meal.

You see, it's the toaster that has me full mode into avoidance behavior.  Perhaps you are familiar with the notion that "they don't make them like that any more"?  Well, the truth is, if they made toasters like this, the peasants of the world would rise up iwth their rakes and shovels and overthrow the small appliance makers.

I feel strongly about this because of Uncle Harry's toaster.  He's the Uncle that belonged to The Man Who Puts Up With Me.  This toaster was so cool, that when you put bread in, it slowly sank down, toasted it to perfection, then slowly brought it to the surface.  We were agog with toaster envy. Like the little green beings on Toy Story, we had to watch the toast go up and down several times, wide-eyed with fascination.  When Harry died, his new wife apparently did not remember how much we coveted the toaster. Who knows where it ended up.

My mother, on the other hand, suffered from Mine-itus, which is a bizarre disease that inflicts certain parents and keeps them from sharing the use of the household's appliances.  I never learned to use the washing machine or dishwasher.  I had limited experience with the toaster, and what was a blender anyway?  When I left home, I was lucky to be too young to fear technology, or I would have been screwed up forever. 

I decided early on that her toaster was possessed by the devil anyway.  I didn't want to get intimately acquainted with any small appliance that couldn't get its job right.  One side of the toast would be brown, the other side was soft.  None ever turned out the same color, though thank God we didn't have to worry about it burning.  When I told Mom that other toasters were for sale at stores in the area, she said, "Ach, who needs a new one?"  Once I even gave her one.  I think she must have sold it at a garge sale or taken it back for something else.

Father still has that darned toaster, and since he's 93, no one bothers to give him one that actually works right.  Since toasters in stores now have a short lifespan, his new one would probably die within a year and he'd have to pull this old one out of storage.  I have secret fears my sister will keep the damned thing out of sheer sentiment.

I have fantasies of dropping it in a lake, or smashing it with a sledge hammer, or running over it with a car.  I won't do it in front of my father.  But someday when I finally have the chance to rid this world of that rotten machine, I am going to put it out of our misery. 

And all of this over the chance of fixing toast for my father's dinner.