Tales Of Household Appliances

• Emily Whyman, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2010

I know the going-ons of every room in your house. I know why the cutlery dislike the microwave; I know which knives carved the permanent scars into the wooden chopping boards; I know what music reminds the CD player of better days, when she played for crowds at parties and fairs; oh, and I know the times you got a tedious phone call and mimed I’m not here!
Yes, I’m aware.
The relationships and lives of all the tid-bits and whatchamacallits in your house are as complex and diverse as any group in society.
Your hot water heater, for example, is a most lonely creature. All night he sits solidly in the garden, the summer air so hot its temperature competes with his boiling innards. The innocent night noises come to him through the dark, sounding more and more sinister as the house quiets and the last light goes out.
All alone in the dark, the boiler man shrinks back into the cold cement wall, feeling his tummy gurgle when you awake to use the bathroom.
He’s no company out there.
At least in the kitchen the oven can tickle the stove, while the fridge magnets chase one another up and down, across the snowy expanse of white. In the back yard, the boiler man slumps drunk on misery and the encroaching rust as the cold light of the moon waxes and wanes each night.
Ah, how we grieve for the loneliness of the hot water heater; for all his warmth he’s treated so coldly.
But oh how he rejoices at the nights when you hold those spectacular dinner parties! The colours of the ladies’ cocktail dresses and the scent of the men’s cologne, they baffle him with their extravagance. He particularly likes the formal-wear of the gardenias and hydrangeas, dressed up to the nines in their delicate, paper decorations. Even the herb garden has been dressed up with fairy lights that shimmer around the basil, coriander and sage, casting a mysterious atmosphere over the warmth of the evening.
As though in a last minute after thought you drape a tie-dyed beach towel over the excited boiler man’s gentle head; hiding him from the guests. He cannot see but he is proud, so very proud to display such radiance at such a fine event.
His pleasure lasts long after the party is over, after aging Mrs CD-player has been silenced and you’ve tossed the dirty silverware chaotically into the swampy dishwater.
All night he puffs his contentment.
And again you gift him!
A companion at last!
The silver, wooden barbeque is assembled before his very eyes; he had never seen a birth before. The sturdy cooker, completed and glistening, is rolled up alongside him and wrapped in a black blanket. Protection from the elements, you had muttered to the other.
He loved the sweet tempered barbeque who was embarrassed to have such a wise old neighbour as he. She was Japanese, she told him as they got to know one another, made a long way away over a great expanse of Pacific. He called her Barb for short and in turn she gave him his very first name: Yasashiji Boira no Dansei. It was a name from her native tongue that meant gentle boiler man. The gentleman in him was grateful, the child in him touched but the Australian in him meekly suggested Dan for everyday use.
And so it was, my dear reader, the lonely boiler man was no longer frightened and alone during the long, eerie nights. Barb and Dan would often stay up talking well into the evening, the cover of darkness no more filled with malice than the new puppy you had bought the kids.
And when all of us were dressed up and the CD player allowed to perform once more, Yasashiji Boira no Dansei was no longer covered with a towel in shame. No, he was far more use than that.
While Barb sizzled and popped the dripping red steaks and pale mountain salmon, Dan was her assistant. He would hold strongly the plates and the pepper and herbs atop his head (the Sous Chef as it were) and from then on he was always included in the bright nights of mirth.

~*~

I sit here, upon the roof of your house, you apartment, your school and tell you this story of Dan the water heater for no particular reason, reader, I assure you. I wish not to preach, I am no parent; I wish not to proselytise, I have no faith.
I think, perhaps it would not be too much to ask of you to be a little kinder to someone in your life you might previously obscured with a beach towel or ignored when they may have needed help.
Just maybe.
I am after all just a bent old man of a TV antenna.
What would I know?