Toasted and jammed

My parents need a new toaster. The toaster they own at present is, in a word, retarded. On the highest setting it barely warms the bread. On the lowest setting I imagine it would be safe to have in the tub with you. The thing has a switch for either toast or bagel which, like Janeane Garofalo participating in political discourse, does absolutely nothing.

I tell my parents they need a new toaster. This is the same thing I have saying at every visit the past two years. Like the issue of above-ground nuclear testing, they say it’s just not a priority for them now. But they have piles of money – why not drop a bit of cash on a new toaster? I think it’s because my dad just can’t go and buy something, he has a special routine for any purchase over ten dollars. Let’s apply his method to the toaster problem.

First, he forms a blue-ribbon commission to investigate the alleged retardedness of the toaster. It consists of dad, mom, and the next-door neighbors, one of whom has celiac disease. She eats only jam, no toast. While I have years of toast-eating experience, I cannot participate in this phase of the project because, thankfully, I am leaving tomorrow.

When the blue-ribbon commission confirms what I have been saying for years, namely, the toaster needs to be taken out back, shot, pounded with a hammer, ground to a fine powder, and mailed to DNC headquarters, it will be time for phase two.

Phase two consist of the feasibility study. Dad painstakingly measures the space available in their newly-remodeled, positively cavernous kitchen for the new toaster, and compares the numbers to the dimensions of all the toasters in the last three decades of the Consumer Reports Buyers Guide. The new kitchen, incidentally, is large enough that one could conduct above-ground nuclear testing by the dishwasher and not even see the explosion at the oven. He compares features among the models that meet the space requirements, even calling manufacturers to ask them, “Does switching to bagel actually do something or should I toast my bagel in a pan like the British do?”

Dad then goes to every Walmart and Target in the tri-state area looking for the right model. He finds Janeane Garofalo working as a greeter at a Walmart in Camden, makes a hand gesture in her direction that only an Italian would truly understand, and drives off. He finally decides to buy the toaster via the Walmart website, his very first online transaction. Before entering his credit card number he’s on the phone with Walmart’s online customer service for three hours asking if some hooligan is going to make off with his credit card and donate money to the Kerry campaign. He is assured that online transactions are safer than making toast.

He buys the toaster but in order to save money on shipping he has it carried by hobos hitching rides on trains across America. Given that very few hobos ride trains anymore, I expect he’ll have the toaster just in time for my visit at Christmas. He’ll spend seven weeks studying the users manual and repeatedly tell my mom, “We have to move the kitchen – if this thing is plugged in too close to the bathroom it might fall in the tub.” The tub they use is upstairs and in a different area code.

That’s how I expect the new toaster purchase to go, if they even get through phase one. I could have built a new toaster with things lying about the house in the time it’s taken me to type this. I’d better go and toast my bagel in a pan or with some nuclear weapons.