- April 18, 2024
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My microwave has seriously been the biggest nag lately.
Step into the kitchen and it never pipes down, green block letters running across its screen in frantic Panic Mode. “PLEASE PRESS CLOCK,” it screams in flashes. Over and over and over again.
It isn’t asking for much, really — just for me to tell it what time and day and month and year it is, following the mental breakdown it suffered from the past couple storms. You see, appliances tend to get disoriented when it rains. Thunder makes them irrational. That’s why they need us, to push their buttons and make the world make sense again.
But this time, I refuse.
The problem is, me and Microwave, we’ve been through this before. When storms came last weekend, who do you think was there to cozy up beside it and reset its clock? “Shhh, Microwave,” I said, gently caressing its door handle. “It’s 2:45 p.m. It’s April 20. Obama is president. Everything’s OK.”
And during last year’s tropical storms, I was there, too. I was even there during the 2005 hurricanes, when the electricity flickered and died so many times that Microwave spiraled into a Woody Allen-style existential crisis, clearing its throat and scrolling “WHY BOTHER” in place of “PLEASE PRESS CLOCK” on its display.
But now, I’ve had enough. It’s time for some tough love. The only way birds ever fly is to be pushed from the nest, and I’m sorry, Microwave, but I’ve coddled you long enough.
Obviously, me refusing to set the microwave clock again has absolutely nothing to do with laziness, you understand. Sometimes, it’s just important to take a stand.
Take household chores, for instance.
Mallorie, my roommate, is a firm believer that dirty pots and pasta colanders should sit in the sink for a minimum of seven days to be given ample time to think about what they’ve done, before she even considers taking a sponge to them. “What message am I sending if, every time they go and get themselves all dirty, I just swoop in and clean up their filthy mess?” she asks, cocooned in a blanket, staring up at the ceiling from her back on the floor.
And who could disagree? One day, without question, Mallorie will become a firm, fair and top-notch child-rear-er.
She also took the same nontraditional, no-nonsense approach with her share of the Christmas decorations. The idea that the holidays had to end in January simply because Society says so infuriated her. So she took the road less traveled and opted instead to keep all of her decorations — boxed, I assume, in order to teach them a lesson — sitting in the middle of her living room floor until last week. And if they didn’t like it, oh well.
She was in the business of making points, not friends.
But Mike, surely you could’ve pitched in, you’re probably thinking. How much work does it really take to throw a few boxes in the attic? Are you really that much of a lazy, good-for-nothing, pencil-neck slob?
First of all, I don’t appreciate your tone. And second, my mother’s always said that the ladies like a thin neck, so … now don’t you feel silly?
The point is that these decisions Mal and I make have nothing to do with laziness or procrastination. They’re matters of serious and substantial principle.
Don’t you see? To compromise, to bend the rules and reset the microwave clock, clean Mallorie’s cartoon character-shaped macaroni-and-cheese pot or put the Christmas decorations away would be a betrayal of my values. And what are we but apes without our values?
It’s like my dad always used to tell me: “A man who doesn’t stand for something isn’t much a man.” And then he’d run off somewhere to not mow the lawn for the third week straight. He wasn’t neglecting it, though; he was growing a weed garden. “Who says knee-high crabgrass is any less beautiful than a potted rose?” he’d say.
Just a shame the city code enforcers never saw it that way.
BY MIKE CAVALIERE | ASSOCIATE EDITOR
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