Fairy Tale Spotlight: Weird Things I Remember

I thought of three things about myself that you might find weird. Let's go over them one by one.

1. I grew up in a tree-house.

The house in question was a stilted house in the middle of a forested area. These sort of houses are better known for being found at beach-side properties. Our basement was above-ground, and our main floor was above it. There was a 3rd floor (or loft) above that. When I would wake up in the morning, I could look out of my window and see the tops of the trees. This was my childhood. I grew up in a tree-house and I dearly miss it.

2: The automatic toaster.

One half of my childhood was spent at my grandparent's water-side property. I spent so much time there, I feel like I was half raised there. My grandparents often bought experimental items. One of them was a top-loading toaster that was automatic. By automatic, I mean that the bread would slowly lower down into the toaster itself, and once the bread was toasted, it would slowly raise the bread back up. No button ever needed to be pressed. The bread was automatically detected by an internal pressure sensor.

I considered this toaster to be superior to all other toasters. Everywhere else I went, people had to press down a bar to get the toast to lower down. I have always wondered why this trend never took off. I suppose people must just like the sound of the toast popping up, but the automatic toaster had its own sound. It was the soft crackling of toasted bread slowly rising up alongside of the grinding gears. There was something very satisfying about that. Just the thought of it makes me hungry.

3: The television phone.

My grandparents also had a TV that doubled as a telephone. It was a Zenith brand, and I never saw any other TV like it. One must merely press the telephone button on the remote (called the SPACE PHONE button), and the broadcast would mute to make way for a dial tone. You could then dial a phone number in using the remote. The phone call would then take place right there at the TV set while the silent TV broadcast would continue to show. Why this did not take off, I have no idea. It was innovative.

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These three things all felt like normal things to me while I was growing up. I only found out later that everyone was different. Maybe they were not so much different as they were just like one another. I suppose these are some of the reasons I often feel secluded from everyone.

Also don't knock the slow moving toast so easily. You'd be surprised how lovely that rising sound was. It's really too bad it never took off.

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