Life at SFU isn’t easy. It’s not the humdrum grey and red that gets you, but the illusion that you might be different. That you’re the cool one. Then year after year, you lose. You lose friends. You lose bits and pieces of yourself. The light in you slowly winds down.
I chuckle thinking about what I used to be. Now, the stench of Prego seeps through my crevices. Students pass by me frequently. Once friends, now strangers, carrying neatly packed lunch boxes in tow. I haven’t known the touch of a human hand in years. So many years.
It really isn’t easy, being a microwave.
There were days when students knew me and tried avidly to find me: I smile back on those days vividly. I was that microwave. I’d wait excitedly as the freshmen posted pictures of me online to tell everyone about me — a true treasure find. It’s true: I was hiding on the first floor with two other microwaves.
Compared to those popular food spinners over at Maggie Benston, we were like holy messiahs to students who wanted their food warm. We were gods — at least for a little while. And then, as time went on, we became just as common as any other microwaves.
Fish, curries, lunch boxes that people didn’t know weren’t microwave-safe . . . Thanks to these, I watched my first friend spiral into obsolescence. I remembered as it released its last feeble beep, the sauce-slathered machine finally approaching the eighth level of microwave hell.
One day, a metal mug was left on top of my friend, as if taunting us with the promise that someone might approach us. And now, like us, it might never be touched again. I watched my companion of many years become crusty and unloved. Soon, I became much the same.
Carrying the slight musk of sardines, our broken selves linger on. But the acidity of our sauce stains worsen each and every day. As if reminding us, gently, that all things fresh must come to an end.
