Toaster Tales Chapter 2: The Three Toast Breakfast

I have been making my own breakfast since I was eight years old. Back then it was very simple: Oatmeal w honey & milk and two pieces of toast. Not the instant kind mind you, good ol' bowling water and Quaker Oats. I knew how I liked it, I knew how to make it, and I liked the independence of it all. My mother had my two younger siblings to tend to so I ate alone. Every day. I loved it.

20 years later, breakfast is still the best part of my day, and I still eat alone. Just me and my newspaper. For 30 minutes I live in the moment; in the present tense. I am at peace. The rest of the day, I will stress over the future, relive the past, and overanalyze every angle of every action, thought, feeling or emotion I experience throughout out the day. Mentally exhausted I will pass out sometime after 10. But by morning I will be ready to face another day. Right after breakfast.

So what got me thinking about the past 20 years of making breakfast? Today I made eggs. Nothing unusual there. But as I pushed down the toaster on my two pieces of bread I started to think. 'I hate how I always run out of toast before I finish my eggs.' Then I asked myself the question I had never thought to ask: 'Why can't I make three pieces of toast?' The obvious answer is of course, I can. But in 20 years I had never thought to ask that question. I even have a four piece toaster. So I threw in another piece of bread and enjoyed the first three toast breakfast of my life. It was as satisfactory a moment as I can remember. I spent the rest of my morning content.

Is life as simple as figuring out what you want and doing is? Can I just not care how it's been done before, or what other people do or think? Can fear or indifference turn the simple into the radical?

I am always good for questions, and so rarely good with an answer, but I can tell you this: You can learn a lot from a toaster if you just listen for a minute.