Goldilocks and the Three Microwaves

Cartoon doodle of a brown bear wearing a golden yellow wig perched atop three microwaves in primary colors.

It’s Monday afternoon, and if you stepped into our house right now, you might think we were trying to open some sort of appliance store. Right now there are four microwaves in this house, and we just ordered another because clearly we have lost our minds.

All this began a few weeks ago when our microwave started getting cranky. Every once in awhile we would go to use it, and it would say nope, spontaneously turning itself off and wiping out the time on the clock. Usually we would try again and the machine would work. We were constantly resetting the clock, and by we I mean Ron. There is a clock on the oven as well, unless the oven happens to be on, in which case it will not display the time because that’s just how our oven is made.

Then the microwave’s crankiness got worse. It decided it liked working at full power for 30 seconds, but nothing else. It wouldn’t let you enter two minutes, say, as a cook time, but you could trick it into cooking something for two minutes simply by pressing the 30 second button four times. Then it decided it had no interest in allowing us to use the auto-defrost function. Ron, who is way more patient with cranky machines than I am, realized you could repeatedly hit the auto-defrost button and enter the weight and at some point it would decide to work. Also, when I say repeatedly I’m not talking about three times.

Anyway, we both agreed that it was time for a replacement microwave. I remembered there was an older spare one in the garage and I lugged it up. It had been in the garage a long time and wasn’t in the best of shape. The printing had warm off indicating the function of most of the buttons. The manual was long gone so we had to guess at what the different buttons did. Also, and this is a small matter, but since this was a stainless steel microwave we now had kitchen appliances in 5 different colors. It was decided that maybe we should just buy a new microwave.

The matter was decided when we saw that we could get a microwave that was allegedly the same size as our cranky old microwave for just over $100 delivered for free. The microwave arrived sooner than we expected and was in excellent condition. Then we attempted to use it and even though it was supposed to be the same size as our old microwave we found out that our dinner dishes did not actually fit in it. So, that wasn’t going to work. We boxed it back up to return it, put old crankypants back on the counter and ordered a larger microwave.

This one definitely looked big enough. In fact, it might have been a little too big. It also looked like perhaps an elephant had sat on the box. The machine had a pretty significant dent in one side. Back in the box it went.

Old not-so-faithful got placed back on the counter. While I got the rest of our dinners ready Ron fought with the old microwave to get it to defrost his chicken, which it did eventually grudgingly do. We decided that maybe a size between the too-small microwave and the one that had been mangled by an elephant and/or a warehouse worker would do the trick.

When I was eleven our family got our first microwave. Well technically it had been a Christmas gift for Mom. That one had been too big too. Well, too big for the trunk of Dad’s car. He figured out that if he reclined the front seat the appliance could ride shotgun. My sister and I who were along for the ride rode squeezed together in what was left of the backseat to make room for the microwave.

That microwave was supposed to be a surprise for Mom, but my sister was still young enough to believe in Santa Claus. She liked to write Santa a note to go with the milk and cookies she left out for him. She filled it with details about her life as if she was writing to an old friend and included in a post script that Daddy had bought Mommy a microwave for Christmas, but it was a secret so he shouldn’t tell. Well, of course on Christmas Eve as Mom and Dad were putting gifts under the tree Mom picked up and read the note. She was definitely surprised about the microwave, just a little bit sooner than Dad had planned.

— Alissa