Crumb – The Insidious Toaster
Attempting to understand why I am who I am, I note this, applicable to an entire range of thoughts, senses, and feelings:
You’ve seen the episode of The Big Bang Theory where Amy keeps Sheldon from finishing his thoughts? Whether it’s a sentence, a thought, or a game, she interrupts each one, and he is left with an incomplete thought and goes a little wacky.
I went outside to work in the yard yesterday morning while my daughter went to her four-hour swim team practice (!). Finished, I came inside to wash up and have a piece of toast. Except I cant’ have a single piece of toast: I have to have two. Still, I tried, knowing that in the case of bread with honey, less is more. I finished one piece and sat there, unsatisfied, my mind stuck. The longer I sat, the more want washed over me. I decided to make another slice and saw the culprit: I have lived with a two or four-slice toaster for sixty years. I am positive now that, as a kid making my own toast, hungry all the time, somewhere and somehow it dawned on me that people much smarter than me designed a toaster to give people what they need, kind of like Apple does with their iPhone updates. It’s nefarious and makes me wonder what other insidious fake needs were let loose on me as a child other than TV ads, magazine ads, smoking ads, and fashion ads? Well, I admit to beating the fashion ads, much to my wife’s chagrin.
So, now I’ve decided to give in to my Pavlovian training and make two pieces at the start. One for me and one for the dog. No one said I have to eat it.
