Me and Microwave

[susandennis]

I love my new microwave. It's so pretty and clean and is the kind that if you want 1 minute of microwaving, you hit the button 1, 2 minutes, 2, I do love simple.

In the 60's when I was in high school we had a second cousin from Germany come live with us for a semester. She was (and might still be) my age. When school was out for the summer, she went home. But Daddy didn't want her to have to change planes so he decided to go with her from our home in North Carolina to New York City and put her on the plane himself. And, I got to go too!

We spent a day just playing in NYC and then we put her on the plane home and had another day to play. Hammacher Schlemmer had a fancy assed store on 5th Avenue. They sold all kinds of stuff - gadgets and toys for grownups. We went to ogle.

The first thing we saw was a golf bag made of pretty leather. I brushed my hands over it and OOOOOOOo it was so soft. Daddy looked at the tag and we discovered that it was made of elephant penis. Daddy said the word penis out loud in public! But, boy was it soft. Wonder if, today, they have a faux elephant penis leather...

The next thing we saw was a handbag - one of those with the maker's logo really small and repeated a million times so it looks like a pattern. Except Daddy looked closely and it wasn't a logo it was just Fuck repeated over and over again. Daddy said fuck it out loud in public!

This was quite the memorable trip.

But then we went up to the home wares floor and there was a big demo going on in the middle. Some lady was cooking stuff in a big metal box called a RadarRange. The cooking took seconds. The bacon came out flat. The rare steak came out hot but still rare. It was a fucking miracle. (When we got home and told Mom, she said we were making this stuff up.)

When they finally came on the market so that everyone could get one, I was at the head of the line.

When I left my husband in the early 80's, I left the house and the furniture (most of which I had paid for). I took my clothes and my microwave.

And, except for a few days like Tuesday and Wednesday, I have had one ever since. And treasured it.

The installers yesterday missed their two hour window by three hours, make a huge mess, drilled yet more holes in my cabinets and walls but finally managed to get it in and working.

It's likely my last microwave ever and that's fine. I love it.

Comments

[bill_schubert]

I've heard that story before but love it. Considering the number of idiot golfers out there a dick with a dick full of sticks seems appropriate.

There are so many people who will never know the joys of Hammacher Schlemmer.

[susandennis]

Only you can really appreciate my thrill/horror at making that discovery as a teenager with Daddy in public.

And, yeah,even their calendar/website is more Harriet Carter junky than anything special.

[bill_schubert]

Oh, yeah. So many are like that.

There was a time you could walk into a Brookstone store and they had bins of hand woodworking tools. Now they have web sites of junk.

[desdemonaspace]

That's hilarious. My dad would never say those words. He was a Missouri Synod Lutheran.

Yay for your new microwave!

[susandennis]

My Dad was Presbyterian with Southern Baptist roots but he got wilder as he got older.

[zoefruitcake]

Microwaves are an essential, I can't imagine not having one these days but I remember the delight in owning my first one in 1992 (a wedding present)

[carriea31]

I wonder how big an elephant penis is. We all sort of think that elephants are giant, so in my head now I'm imagining an elephant wandering around with a golf bag in place of his other junk. ... like a one to one trade? HAHAHAHAHA. What a mental image!

[susandennis]

OMG that is an amazing image!! "I'll take the 3 iron, thanks."

[carriea31]

Hahahha

[thestainlesssteelrat]

I'd like an elephant penis bag *with* fuck written all over it. (Although not really, poor elephant)

[susandennis]

Seeeeeee that's why we need faux elephant penis leather!

[meowmensteen]

I remember when my uncle Rick got a Microwave in the 80's. I was visiting my cousins and they were showing it off like it was a magic trick. "Watch! As I put this ordinary cup of water in this magic box. One minute later, Voila! It's boiling!!" We took turns boiling water for a hour before my uncle made us stop. He has such a big power bill the first month he had that thing haha.

[roasted_beets]

I heated a mug of water for instant coffee in our first microwave. My husband said "We paid $500 to heat water?" lol

[mollywheezy]

I wonder how many elephant penises it took to make a golf bag . . . and if it's just one, then elephants have really huge penises . . . I don't think I've ever seen an elephant's penis, and I briefly thought of googling it, but NO. I do NOT want to start getting ads for various penis products . . .

LOL at that trip with your dad! That was certainly very memorable. :)


I LOLed at my family with your microwave story. We were seriously the last people to get any new technology. Even when we did finally get a microwave, once that one broke, it was ages before my parents bought another one.

[dandylover1]

My microwave is even simpler. Set the dial to two minutes and leave it until it dings. Hammacher Schlemmer is still around, but I have never known them to sell anything with obscenities on it.

[spiffikins]

I think our first microwave was in 1979 or 1980 - definitely several years before 1990 because we had it for years in the house we lived in until 1990. We had that microwave until probably 1999 - and the one that replaced it was half the size, LOL

[rsc]

Glad you love your microwave, and that the user interface is simpl and conveniente.

Why is it that every microwave has a different user interface? (Worse still, in these days of online ordering or sealed packages, it's impossible to tell what that interface is before you buy.) We have a relatively new microwave in Gloucester whose interface I really hate; the regular heating doesn't allow you to specify an arbitrary time, it increments by 10 seconds up to three minutes, and by 30 second thereafter. The "defrost" option doesn't even allow you to specify a time; you pick a category and tell it how many ounces of it you're defrosting. (Needless to say, "frozen blintzes" is not one of the categories, and I have no clue how much four of them weigh.)

The one in Cambridge is OK except that the clock-setting function doesn't work the way the instructions say it does (I don't know if it works at all). This wouldn't bother me, since I don't need the microwave to tell me what time it is, but having a clock with the wrong time is annoying.

[susandennis]

One feature I loved about the old one was the ability to turn the fucking clock off!

[mrdreamjeans]

Thanks for the story-telling smiles!

[christopher575]

I wonder if the Fuck logo was actually French Connection UK, they put Fcuk and FCUK on stuff all the time. Haven't seen it in ages but the company is still around.

Oh, but Wikipedia says they were founded in 1972.