The Microwave Standoff
What should be sixty seconds becomes a war between numbers, patience, and the smug beep of the machine.
I set the timer for one minute. Sixty seconds. A laughably short span in the grand scheme of time, and yet, in front of the microwave, it feels endless.
The first thirty seconds are agony. Nothing is happening. The food isn’t hot yet, but you watch anyway. Fifty-eight. Fifty-seven. Fifty-six. Each second falls with unnecessary slowness, dragging on longer than it should. It isn’t progress so much as a steady provocation, each tick daring you to lose patience.
Finally, the halfway mark: thirty seconds. And now the real game begins. Numbers no longer descend politely, they reveal allegiances. Multiples of five appear like holy checkpoints, grounding me in a sense of order. Multiples of ten? That’s transcendence. Thirty. Twenty. Ten. The sacred shrines of the countdown, shimmering in the distance like mirages in the desert.
But then come the stragglers: twenty-seven, nineteen, thirteen. Barbarian numbers. Crooked, selfish digits that exist only to test my patience. Numbers that feel wrong, that taste wrong, that I cannot in good conscience allow to dictate the fate of my meal. They leer at me from the screen, daring me to flinch. I cannot.
Inside, my food spins uncovered, naked, doomed. Too long, and it will splatter violently, marking the microwave walls with the stains of my arrogance forever. Too short, though, and I would face the greatest humiliation of all: putting it back in. Reheating twice is culinary perjury. A confession under oath that I, an adult human being, failed at the most basic measurement of time and heat.
At seven seconds, I falter. Five is near — a good number, a righteous number — but the pull of zero is absolute. Zero is destiny, completeness. Yet to reach it is to face the beep. The beep is not just a sound, but a declaration of sovereignty, the machine announcing that it rules me.
At one second, I make my move. I yank the door open, severing the countdown, denying the beep its triumph. Silence. I have won.
Or so I thought. The glowing “:01” remains, buzzing on the screen like graffiti. To leave it is chaos. To clear it is surrender. Defeat by what? Numbers? Electronics? Myself?
I press “clear.” A soft, smug beep. The machine claims victory anyway.
I carry my plate to the table, take a bite, and find the food still cold.
I finish it anyway.
Better to suffer in defeat than reheat in disgrace.