About My Microwave

I’ve been thinking about my microwave lately. It’s tiny, old, and takes longer than most of us are used to to heat things up. But it’s special.

When I moved here a year and a half ago, I asked my parents to see whether they still had my college microwave somewhere. I was spending money on a lot of other things in order to get settled and thought buying a new microwave was unnecessary.

When they brought it over, I had a good laugh over the fact that it still had a sticker on the back with my college address. I enjoyed the retro-ness of its faux woodgrain sides. (I had forgotten that once upon a time it was thought that microwaves would blend more naturally into a kitchen if they looked as if they were made of wood.) And I remembered that it was older than I had thought; it was actually in my grandmother’s kitchen for a number of years before I took it to college in 1994. I remember when she first got it. She figured everyone else had a microwave so she ought to get one too, even though she rarely used it. It wasn’t until much later, after she gave me this one for college and then bought a replacement microwave, that she got into the swing of reheating soup and Lean Cuisines the modern way.

The microwave fit perfectly into an otherwise useless nook of the counter next to the fridge, so I was good to go. I pushed the button to open the door – it required a bit more effort than today’s units – and chuckled. First of all, the interior was basically spotless, presumably because I had given it a thorough once-over sometime in the late ’90s (“Gosh, it is so great that I am such a clean person,” I thought). Aside from one blemish: a brown splotch that could only be a burn. The smell of burnt microwave popcorn somehow popped in my mind. I remembered an “incident” in college when my roommate accidentally set a bag of popcorn to cook too long. Remember how the smell of someone’s overmicrowaved popcorn would linger? God, I hate that smell. It’s kind of like when someone makes an afternoon bag at work but is so psyched to eat it they stand right next to it so there’s no way it would overcook, and then instead of talking about the weather everyone else in the office is like, “Oooh, someone made popcorn!” like just smelling the stuff is the highlight of their horrible day.

And this is why instead of microwave popcorn, now I use my grandmother’s old hot-air popcorn popper. Also, it’s super fun for sleepovers with the nieces and reminds me of being a little kid.

(Well, OK, actually the main reasons I use it are that I love real butter on popcorn and because I’m cheap and prefer to buy a bag of kernels instead of a bag of kernels plus chemicals. Plus it would probably take for-freakin’-ever to pop a bag in this tiny old microwave.)