It’s first thing in the morning. You get into your car. No worries, you have plenty of time. You fire up the engine and look at the dashboard. Panic. You could have sworn you had a few more minutes. At least 5. What’s going on?

You’re running on microwave time. My time.

I am a clock on cocaine. You can’t trust me. You can reset my time as often as you’d like, but I’ll never keep it. I run fast. Because I am the appliance of the fucking future. I want your day to be over sooner, so you can come back home and admire the piece of military-grade cooking precision that is me.

Maybe you should look at the stove once in a while if you want to plan out your day. It keeps pretty good time. I mean, it’s no Big Ben, but it’ll do. But you don’t want to. The stove is a boring asshole. It’s like having your nagging parent as an appliance. Always beeping about this and that, telling you when it’s ready for you to put the food in. You can just pop me open and slide in that food whenever; I’m always ready to go. And let’s be honest, between you and me, the stove peaked in the 50s, and it’s too stupid to figure it out. Nice heating elements, Grandpa. You ever hear of evolving?

Me? I just run on this little thing called RADIATION. Maybe you’ve heard of it? It pretty much ended World War 2 by terrifying that scumbag Hitler so bad that he shit his unterhosen before planting a bullet in his brain. It helps turn cancer cells on themselves and saves millions of lives every year. But my awesome power scares people sometimes. Yeah, sales were bad after Chernobyl, but that was a huge misunderstanding. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

“I don’t even OWN one of those things,” you’ll hear people say, their voices filled with derision, desperately trying to sound interesting to their equally insufferable friends. I have it on good authority that, secretly, those people do in fact microwave, and they microwave hard and way more than anyone should. I’m not here to name names, so it’s best that I leave it at that.

There are other complaints that are valid.

“It cooks a little unevenly.”

Yeah, well, like, maybe you should stir your fucking food once in a while?

“It doesn’t defrost meat very well.”

You got me there. But in my defense, when you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and when you’re basically a goddamn nuclear device, it’s hard to “kind of cook, but not really cook the meat.” I’ll own up to that. I don’t have time for your half measures; leave that up that idiot stove. Did you know that the stove’s favorite TV show is The Big Bang Theory? I swear to the appliance gods that it is like living with your grandfather. The fridge is cool, though. It irks me sometimes, but we have a good working relationship.

Maybe you could learn a thing or two from microwave time. People are always rushing
around, and for what? On your best days, you end up at home with me. Warm and cozy, watching some prestige TV with a nice steaming pile of freshly microwaved food that might be cold in the middle because you are too stupid, or lazy, to stir it halfway through the cook time. It’s all we
really want. That’s just not how the world should be.

So, the next time you show up late and someone gets angry, or even has the gall to tap their watch, tell them, “I’m on microwave time.”



Rob White is a Canadian-based award-winning filmmaker and part-time author. Follow him on Instagram @robwhitemakemakesstuff