Listen to On The Violent Aerodynamics of a Pastry
There are moments in life that force you to confront the great philosophical questions: the nature of consciousness, the existence of free will, the reason a frosted blueberry toaster pastry will, when provoked, achieve a velocity previously thought exclusive to government-funded railguns.
My morning began with a simple desire for a hot, sugary breakfast substitute. I placed the pastry into the slots of my toaster, an appliance I had previously trusted. I depressed the lever. A soft click. A gentle, promising warmth began to emanate from the machine. All was right with the world.
This state of grace lasted for approximately forty-five seconds.
Then came the scent. It was not the wholesome aroma of toasted grain. It was the sharp, acrid smell of impending doom. The smell of sugar undergoing a phase transition from "delicious" to "volcanic magma."
Oh. Shit.
I couldn't see it, but I knew what happened. The pastry was stuck. The blueberry filling, now a bubbling, superheated gel, had fused with the molten frosting to form a sugary cement, binding the pastry to the heating element like a mythological hero chained to a rock for eternity.
The smoke began. A thin, blue-grey wisp. Then a thicker, more assertive plume.
And then, the scream.
My smoke alarm, an instrument of torture designed with the specific frequency of a pterodactyl being disemboweled, erupted in a series of soul-shattering shrieks. It is an auditory assault so profound it scrambles your DNA. I flapped a dish towel at it, a desperate, primate gesture of appeasement. The shrieking continued, mocking my cloth-based diplomacy.
Action was required. I unplugged the toaster, silencing the source of the smoke but not the alarm. I dragged a chair over, climbed it with the unsteady grace of a man who knew he was making a series of escalatingly bad decisions, and fumbled with the alarm's cover. The shriek died with a pathetic chirp. Silence descended. A thick, smoky, accusatory silence.
Now, it was just me and the toaster. Me and the prisoner trapped within its metal gut.
"I can solve this," I thought, with the hubris that precedes all great domestic disasters. I retrieved a fork.
Yes, I know. You don't put a fork in a toaster. But it was unplugged. The risk of electrocution was gone. The risk of abject failure, however, was rapidly approaching.
I jammed the fork into the pastry's carbonized shell and pried. It was wedged tight. The thing had the structural integrity of a load-bearing wall. I wiggled. I twisted. I put my weight into it. The toaster slid across the counter, a reluctant dance partner.
And then it happened.
With a sound that was both a crack and a squelch, the pastry came free. But it did not simply emerge. Oh no. It launched. Propelled by the stored kinetic energy of my desperate prying, the pastry rocketed out of the toaster slot. It flew across my kitchen, a smoking, vaguely rectangular UFO, trailing a comet's tail of burnt-sugar-scented smoke.
I heard a sharp THWACK as it impacted a cabinet door, followed by the soft, sticky, sliding sound of a defeated foe.
I stood there for a long moment, fork in hand, in the smoky, silent kitchen. I was a warrior at the end of a terrible battle. My ears rang. The air tasted of carbon. I had won, but at what cost?
Now I had a new quest: to find the projectile. I got on my hands and knees. I began to sweep my hands across the floor, my fingers searching for the tell-tale stickiness of the landing zone. My world had been reduced to this. A blind man, crawling through his own kitchen, hunting for a weaponized breakfast food.
I found it, nestled against the base of the refrigerator. It was still warm. A little monument to my failure.
I did not eat it. But I did learn something. I learned that chaos is always closer than you think. And it smells faintly of burnt blueberries.
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