Toaster Inferno

My father set the toaster on fire when I was a kid. He didn’t mean to. My mother was in the hospital. Tonsillectomy. This was 1979 or thereabouts, and my brother and I were left in his care. My sister was either unborn, staying with my great Aunt Connie, or, because she was an infant, I have excised her from this memory for her safety.

Like most children, my brother and I had an implicit trust that we were in able hands. Adults knew everything. We were clothed and fed and lived in an era when a child’s entertainment rarely intersected with the adult world, let alone was dependent on it. We were left to our own devices most of the time. We watched television, played football in the front yard, and when we were really bored, hurled ourselves over couches, oblivious to our father’s admonitions.

Mealtime was absolute. I don’t remember an evening when my mother didn’t prepare an entree paired with a starch, salad, or vegetable. Gunshy after the toaster incident, Dad fed us the three-tiered chocolate cake my mom made before her hospital stay and completely ignored the refrigerator that held three days’ worth of meals with handwritten notes (reheating instructions) taped to the rim of each casserole dish. When the cake ran out, he resorted to Oreos, Ruffles, and cold cereal. Nothing that could catch fire. We loved it, of course. We were young enough to. If this sounds like sitcom fodder, I suppose it is.

I don’t know if this was the formative experience of my parenting life, but Dad setting the toaster on fire comes to mind occasionally, when I am alone with my three sons or during holidays for a reminiscent laugh. That I am nothing like my father in this respect usually surprises people, mostly women, mostly mothers.

I don’t fault my father, who was more than a competent homework helper, basketball coach, and sage advisor. His mother died when he was fifteen, and he came of age in the 1950s. But I wonder why in the 21st Century stereotypes remain so deeply entrenched. Can we retire the sitcom dad fumbling about, nearly setting the house on fire? The “all thumbs” when it comes to anything but drinking beer and watching football, Dad. I do both regularly, but I also pack lunches, fold laundry (fitted bedsheets aside- does anyone actually know how to fold them?), and make hamburger casserole. Yet a father’s ineptness remains a consistent punchline. I don’t have to wonder at its origins, but I can question its persistence, especially since I and many of the men I know handle domestic chores as deftly as bees cull pollen.

Terms like “Disney dad”, “deadbeat dad”, and “do nothing dads’ exist for a reason (the last one may or may not exist as a pejorative, but it seems implicit in advertisements and television shows), but there are no opposite gender equivalents. Perhaps there aren’t any grounds, but a doting mother (or father) may be more instrumental in generations of bunglers than sitcom dads, real or make-believe.

I paid more attention to my mother, who by the time I was in fifth grade would say, “If you want a clean football uniform for practice, wash it yourself!” than I ever did to my father’s rare exploits in the kitchen. So nearly every evening in the fall, after clomping cleats free of mud, I went inside and did my laundry. We mowed the lawn, made our beds, and took out the trash. We vacuumed every Saturday and cleaned the toilets too. And God help us if we didn’t bustle like firemen when we heard my mother’s car horn signaling to us that she had a trunkful of groceries to be carried in. We were made to get awful jobs- a paper route, antiquated even in 1988. The local hardware store where I was scolded by old men for not knowing electrical conduit from a lag bolt. My brother bagged groceries, painted billboards, and, one summer, worked in a toll booth.

This might be considered child abuse these days. I griped about it back then, but I am grateful for it now. I pick up dirty clothes, clear the kitchen table, and make pizza dough. That, for all the stereotypical gender roles out there, the mother who does everything may be worse than the father who does nothing. It’s just a thought when I see a mother stoop to tie her 9-year-old’s shoelaces at a soccer game.

Now that my sons are out of diapers and strollers, I get fewer quizzical looks when we are out and about. But I’ve faced assumptions about my incompetence simply by taking my kids to the park, and felt what I imagine women have felt and still feel in the corporate setting. This guy can’t possibly know what he’s doing.

But I do.

Thanks to teaching, I have spent 17 summers at home with my sons. We fish. We swim. We hike nature trails. We visit museums, pop-up carnivals, and bounce house parks. No one starves or dehydrates or gets sunburned. We’ve mostly had fun. And when my wife, who now works a corporate job, is out of town, I operate the oven, the washer, and the vacuum. In fact, I do it even when she’s home. But it’s a shame that I worry that my sons won’t. Maybe because of stereotypes. Maybe because we coddle them (by today’s standards, not that much), but mostly because they are less aware of the person standing in their kitchen than the one on television and YouTube. And that makes me want to set the toaster on fire.

 

Ken Malatesta is a teacher and writer from Chicago. He lives in Skokie, Illinois, with his wife and three sons. His work has appeared in Chicago Quarterly Review, Sky Island Journal, Bridge VIII, Oddball Magazine, Book XI, The Hopper, The Compressed Journal for Creative Arts, Fatherly, and Motherwell Magazine. His essay “Puzzling Toward Oblivion” was named a Notable Essay of the Year by Best American Essays 2023.