Now many people when they hear the phrase toaster, have an automatic vision of a box shaped object, likely to be white or silver, with slots on top that the bread fits into. Now anyone who knows me, knows that the average two slot toaster that you might have the vision of in your head, isn't going to work for this house, or this family. There are eight of us in this house, soon to be nine. Assuming we all had breakfast at the same time, it would take forever for me to make toast in a two slot toaster.
Before I tell you all about my current toaster, I feel like I can't tell you without describing the death of it's predecessor.
It was probably much like the toaster you imagined. White plastic shell, two slots on top, wide enough for a bagel. When I bought that toaster, there were only six people living in my house, and toast seemed much more manageable then. It lived happily in its home on my counter, providing us with toast and various toaster pastries in its all too short life. The demise of this toaster was very confusing at first. It took us a while to figure out what happened to it.
One ordinary day Morgan was being quite helpful and decided to make toast with breakfast. She dropped the toast in the slots and pressed the lever down that magically turns the bread into toast. Moments later the kitchen filled with a horrible smell. I told Morgan to stop using the toaster and throw the half turned bread away. I meant to check it out later and figure out the smell, but I puzzled over it in the back of my mind for the rest of the day. Later that afternoon, Alex walked into the kitchen for an unrelated reason, and promptly discovered the source of the smell. He caught my strange cat Bean hovering over the toaster...relieving himself into it. I'm still confused as to how my cat was not electrocuted. We disposed of the toaster, and took Bean to the vet. She said he had a bladder infection, and that cats will relieve themselves in unusual spots when that happens, but that she had never heard of a cat using a toaster for that purpose.
After that we were toasterless for a while. We wanted to make sure Bean was cured before we released another toaster into the house. We also took a long time debating over the type of toaster we wanted. Two slots was obviously too small for our rather large family, and four slots didn't appeal to me either. We ended up deciding on a toaster oven.
Our toaster oven has been good to us. Providing us with toast and other toaster items, as well as giving us a quick way to have some pizza rolls. But sometime in December some friends called with a very serious request. They wanted to borrow the toaster oven. Now a casual friend might have gotten the immediate no, but these weren't casual friends. They are the couple with kids the same age as ours, couple with the same interests, couple we love to hang out with, couple we always have fun with, couple we trust our kids alone with, best friends couple. You can't say no to them unless you have a really good reason.
So I sent my toaster off with them. They used it to make us really awesome Christmas presents, so I guess it was a good trade off.
But you know, I think I had the urge to make toast more times when it was gone than I ever did while it was here. Isn't that the way things always work?
A couple of weeks ago, They called, wanting to return it, I was about to leave the house so I had to say no. My friend informed me that my poor toaster had been in her trunk for a couple of weeks, and had been whimpering out of loneliness every time she opened the trunk. I felt bad, but I still left.
They were finally able to return the toaster over the weekend. We went to their house for dinner, and they had Morgan put it back in my van, and you know, I haven't thought about it since then. Until my English professor mentioned toasters today. That's when I decided that I needed to tell you the tale of my toaster. Well I guess this was closer to a tale of two toasters.
Thanks for reading.
