What happened is that they cooked faster than the other ones.
[Pause.]
Um … the broiler malfunctioned?
[Pause.]
Okay, while in the living room ruminating over a tome about the
human condition, all right, all right, reading about the breakup of
Angelina and
Billy Bob, I completely forgot about the bread. Okay?
Happy now?
So, it burned.
A wisp of smoke must have alerted the alarm system, which went off
like a train whistle.
After finally figuring out how to turn the oven off, I despaired
for my hearing and wondered if I should just run outside and let
the house burn down. But I was in my shorts. (Self-
employed; home office.) So I ran upstairs instead. Once I got
there, it occurred to me that I didn't know why I was there. So I
ran back downstairs.
Eventually, it occurred to me to turn off the alarm. The problem
was, I didn't know how. As I mentioned, we had just bought the
house. I've never lived in a house with an alarm before. The only
smoke detectors I had been around were those battery-operated jobs.
Those practically sang you a lullaby compared to this thing. And
you could turn them off by simply reaching up and unscrewing them.
This alarm, on the other hand, made me feel like one of the apes in
2001: A Space Odyssey. I just stared at all the buttons, the
incessant screech blaring in my skull. There was no "Off" button.
Finally, I just pushed a lot of stuff. And, luckily, the shrieking
stopped. My head vibrated back to normal. There was quiet again.
Did I mention that I just moved into a new house?
It's gonna take some getting used to because it's kinda nice.
In the past we've gone for fixer-uppers, er, dumps. We thought of
them more as having "character." That's what you call it when the
plumbing doesn't work; the hardwood floors aren't just distressed,
they're abused; and you get an electrical shock when you use the
toaster.