Dinner Plates

  
Today I can report that things are “as usual” around here. The trend that began a month ago continues. The rain keeps falling, and things keep breaking (e.g. the hot tub cover lift, hot tub pump, kitchen faucet, porch light, gate latch, garage door, cable modem, TV receiver, dinner plates, etc.) But hey, broken stuff is just stuff, and it can all be fixed ...well, except for those dinner plates. I dropped two of 'em last week while emptying the dishwasher and pieces flew everywhere. Superglue step aside, this is a job for Super-Broom; and so with the help of his partner Dustpan-Man soon every last ceramic shard was safely disposed of, but my plate troubles didn’t end there.

Two days later I was broiling some cheese over a bagel, which you should never do on a good plate, and in half the time it takes to walk out of the kitchen I’d forgotten that I was cooking ...until I smelled smoke. The second rule of broiling (after the no plates rule) is don’t shut the oven door, but being culinarily challenged I broke that one too. When I ran into the kitchen and flung open the oven door, thick black smoke billowed into the room; so I swiftly turned on the fan and the smoke quickly abated.

Being an expert at burning things in the kitchen, I’ve become very adept at hitting the fan switch. Faster than Wyatt Earp could draw his gun on me, I could have all the smoke cleared from the Tombstone Saloon. Which come to think of it would only serve to give ol’ Wyatt a better shot. Similarly in this situation the lack of smoke that initially seemed like a good thing, really wasn’t. Seeing a flash of light I realized that …no, not that I’d been shot ...I realized that the smoke had suddenly stopped because the fresh air rushing into the oven had caused the smoking bagel to burst into a flaming bagel, and a very efficient clean burning one at that.

Well by the time I got the fire put out the plate had reached temperatures that the manufacturer was clearly unprepared for. Amazingly though it didn’t break, but now it looked like something pulled from a 16th century Japanese raku pit, and it no longer matched the other dishes. Later that afternoon, when it was cool enough to touch I threw it away.

In hindsight, I wish hadn't. I wish I had washed it, and re-stacked it with the rest of the dishes Though wounded and scarred for life, it should not have been discarded. Like so many other outcasts it had a story to tell. A story of hardship and misfortune, but like other poor souls who are tossed aside and shunned by society, those stories will never be heard. The other plates were just left to say among themselves “where’s Bob?” Then one of them said “I told you, these things always happen in threes.” To which one of those know-it-all bowls replied "you mean fours, bad things always happen in fours." This morning I swear a coffee cup flinched when I reached for it. Everyone's on edge. They're probably gonna want to sleep with the cupboard door open again tonight.