Toast

They say marriage is hard work. I never really quite understood this. What exactly is hard about it? Before I got married last year I figured there were about three things I had to remember: Say "I love you" fairly often, don't smack her around, and don't fuck other women. None of these really seem like hard work to me. In fact, smacking her around and sleeping with other women seem to me they would actually be harder work than just not doing those things. And if telling your wife you love her is hard work, well, maybe you didn't marry the right person. I don't know, maybe my wife is not as high maintenance as other women. I don't make shit for money, and I spend too much of that money on CDs or concert tickets. I constantly complain about living in Boston. I talk to/scream at the news on TV. But she still comes home every night. No divorce papers yet. So I have never seen this whole marriage thing as work.

That is, until recently. You see, I had to buy a new toaster.

My wife loves toast. Just loves it. She has toast every day. If we were on the Newlywed Game and they asked me what her favorite food was, I would probably say toast. So it was a serious thing when our toaster went on the fritz the other day. So I told her I would buy a new one since I'm working near a local mall. So on my lunch break I went to the Sears to buy a toaster. Now when I was single and my toaster broke I would just go to Target or KMart and find the cheapest toaster I could and try to find one for less than $10 if at all possible. And that would be after about six months of using the oven when I wanted toasted bread. But I'm not single anymore. I'm toasting for two now. And I had only one instruction from the better half - no white toasters, which of course seem to be the most common color these days and all the cheap ones seem to be white.

I'm standing there at the toaster section looking at all my choices and having the hardest time picking one out. I'm drawn to the four-slice models. My family never had that kind growing up and I always wanted one. Just imagine being able to toast four things at a time! But not only do we not have room in our shoebox apartment for that, it could also send the wrong message to my wife about my thoughts on reproduction. So I'll stick with the regular two-slicers. So I'm looking at them and trying to decide metal or black. There are more choices among the metal variety, so I decide I'll stick with that. But then there's the choice between two kinds of metal, shiny or dull/brushed-look. I'm trying like crazy to figure out which one will "go" with our kitchen, and I can't even believe I'm having that thought. When the hell did I start caring that my kitchen matched? And I think the answer is when I decided that my goal for this shopping trip was to get the perfect toaster for my beautiful wife so she'll be happy. This is not a completely unselfish act of course. The thing I probably hate more than shopping is returning. So I'm trying to avoid that as much as I can and it all hinges on this decision. If she doesn't like what I choose I'll be back here tomorrow and nobody wants that. Not that she would get pissed about it or anything. That's more like growing up with my mother, who would fly off the handle over a bad a small appliance purchase without hesitation. No, my wife would say it's fine even if she didn't like my choice, but I would be able to tell if she hated it and would take it back.

So I narrow it down to a cheap looking $25 no brand name kind, or a $65 Cuisinart. Yeah, 65 bucks. For a toaster. And the Cuisinart has all these extra buttons on it that I can't figure out what they actually do. I mean, it's a toaster. What the hell else is it supposed to do? So at this point I've been standing in front of toasters for about a half an hour and should just grab one and go. But do I do that? No, I decide I should go over to the Filene's and see what choices they have. And they are basically the same except the Cuisinart they have is slightly different and called a "classic" style. But I can't tell exactly what the difference is so I go back over to the Sears to look at the one there again. Seems to be a difference in the shape of the knob more than anything. Of course this becomes an internal argument over which of the two knobs my wife would prefer. After about twenty more minutes of thinking about it and going back and forth between stores one more time I go with the dull metal kind at the Filene's that cost a total of $63 (on sale, reg. price $83). The metal seems like it will match our sugar and flour canisters so that clinched the choice. Seriously, I actually made a conscious decision to match an appliance.

So I go home with a toaster that cost about four times what I thought I would ever spend on a toaster. Of course when she saw the receipt she said that I didn't need to spend that much on a toaster and could have gotten any cheap thing. But I know she likes it. I could tell she was pretty darn impressed with the matching I accomplished. So it was well worth it.

Boy, marriage is hard work.