Microwave Memories

Back in the day when I was living with my parents in Zionsville, I often found it helpful to suggest ways that they could improve their lives (and mine) through the purchase of some new something. By 1975 -- the year we moved to Z'ville and the year I started high school -- the popularity of microwave ovens in American homes had sky rocketed. I was quite sure that our lives would be significantly improved if we, too, had one of these appliances.

I am not sure when I began campaigning toward this end, but I do know that over time, my recommendations grew in their intensity and passion. The bottom line reason we didn't get one was budgetary. So, one particular Christmas when the church my dad pastored gave my folks a monetary gift, I was sure we'd finally get our microwave.

I was wrong.

My mom had her eye on a chair. An Occasional Chair, to be more exact.

One afternoon that winter my mom found me standing in the living room punching imaginary buttons on that chair and placing some sort of snack on the seat. She asked what I was doing and I told her that I was using the new microwave to heat up my food.

It was a few years longer before my parents had their first microwave and truly, I don't think our lives were in any way less meaningful than they would have been had that technology arrived earlier. In fact, I'm quite sure of it.