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Antediluvian
By Maude Khannes
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A bizarre event often referenced in medical journals of the early 20th century
involved the remarkable pregnancies of several women across the United States.
Upon delivery, these mothers found themselves faced with unexpected arrivals
that baffled scientists and obstetricians throughout the globe. Toasters, the
sort used to warm slices of bread to a crisp condition for breakfast, were being
born to couples who believed they were about to start families of offspring.
Often, the new parents found themselves in denial, insisting that their newborns
were normal and without any sort of unique circumstances surrounding their
delivery. With earnest and sincere intent, the affected parties proceeded to
raise the toasters as infants, no different than their age-respective peers.
This scenario produced a variety of interpretive dilemmas for the parents of
these appliances. For instance, how did one go about feeding the child?
Investigation revealed two orifices, slot-shaped in a parallel arrangement, at
the top of the toaster. Were these mouths? If so, this created a great deal of
anxiety for the parents who would place a strained cuisine dish into the
perceived mouth only to have it returned quite propulsively in what many
interpreted as vomit. If this was indeed the case, as many couples reasoned,
then their children were starving themselves to death through this bulimic
behavior. Fortunately, a solution presented itself for some parents who came to
the conclusion that the slots represented both mouth and rectum and that the
action previously defined as vomiting was in fact excretion of digested
material. Thus satisfied, the relieved parents would respond with celebratory,
loving, and supportive cheers as their babies made their excrements. However,
despite the occasional victory of reassuring perceptions, many couples found
their psyches overwhelmed with the burdens of caretaking. This resulted in a
great wave of toaster children being put up for adoption by their weary parents.
These abandoned toasters froze to death in the streets or languished in
orphanages, unappealing to those seeking normal children to adopt. As they
reached the age of legal adulthood, they became wards of the state as inmates of
state-funded mental asylums whose psychiatrists diagnosed the toasters as
catatonic schizophrenics unable to survive or perform in society. Most of these
toasters died elderly and under the harsh treatment of fame-seeking doctors
hoping to find a cure for their afflictive states. Sadly, no cure ever arrived
and the remarkable medical marvels died in ignominious circumstances, as
mysterious in their deaths as in their births. Their stories disappeared into
the annals of time, replaced by the excitement over the scientific achievements
of the age; television, microwave ovens, and the threat of nuclear annihilation
brought the country into a brand new era of progress where the view was always
focused into the future at an indistinct but optimistic and bright point on the
horizon.
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Maude Khannes insists that the above text is
100% factual, and we at Defenestration
would like to back up that claim. Weirder things have happened. The other day,
Eileen gave birth to a healthy baby television. Babysitting is easy.
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