Toasters. There’re one of those things that are really interesting the first few times that you use them, but after 5-6 uses, the novelty quickly wears off. Then, it quickly becomes a boring few minutes of mindlessly waiting for something that probably won’t even come out well, while also hoping with a sort of bored desperation that the bread doesn’t catch on something and burn.

Even worse than that, perhaps, is when the bread comes out, and isn’t toasted enough. Then, just when you’re anticipating a nice, edible piece of toast, you get forced to eat the exact opposite: either a practically untoasted piece of bread with or without some type of spread on it (both are equally poor options in this situation), or you have to put the bread in the toaster again. If you just eat it as it is, it often tastes pretty bad, and also quite bland. If you put it through the toaster again, you run the risk of burning the bread really badly, while also wasting quite a bit of time and effort. Unfortunately, this is pretty easy to do, because the paint that’s on the knobs controlling the toaster wear down quite quickly. Eventually, when they’re gone, you kind of have to sort of turn the knob all the way down (or up, for that matter), and then fiddle around with it, relying on intuition to get the speed you want. Fun.

Interestingly enough, I used to deliberately try to do the second option: burning the bread. On the first pass through the toaster, I would try to get just the right amount of charcoal on the bread, just barely crossing the line of “inedibleness.” The bread would literally come out basically pitch-black on the outside, and it would taste really bitter. There wasn’t much purpose in doing it, other than adding a minute trace of amusement into the dullness of the day. After a while, I sort of just gave up, and decided that waiting a few extra seconds wasn’t worth it, and I would benefit more by just using those seconds to sit down on a chair. Life is interesting, sometimes. 

Even though my bread has never actually legitimately gotten stuck, and then subsequently set on fire (interestingly enough, it in fact has gotten set on fire, without getting stuck before. It still tasted fine), I’m always slightly paranoid that it will. I’m not scared of the fire. Rather, I’m scared because I’d have to then go through all of the effort of “unstucking” it, walking all the way over to where the rest of the bread is, and then putting a separate piece of bread in the toaster. And then waiting for it to toast properly. 

Just simply can’t be bothered.