I’ll let you in on a little secret: burnt toast has very little to do with bread.
I mean, the story itself does have toast in it. The morning started out so ordinary—our family gathered in the breakfast nook, busily passing platters of eggs and bacon, talking over one another and repeatedly asking that someone please pass the salt. Then it happened. On the plate of toast, I noticed one little burnt piece neglected in favor of the golden brown slices beneath it.
At the time I was only a teenager, which in retrospect probably contributed to the dramatic nature of the situation. The toast was just trying to be toast (because if you’re going to anthropomorphize anything, it might as well be food products). It had been given a difficult lot in life—a little too long in the toaster, through no fault of its own. Neglecting the burnt toast was unfair and cruel, not to mention wasteful. So as my family looked on in bewilderment, and with tears streaming down my cheeks, I shoved the burnt toast in my mouth and started talking about how if no one else would love it, at least I would love it, and let it fulfill its destiny to be the toast that it deserved to be.
Understandably, I never lived that one down.
Fast forward to many years later—my wedding day. My sister and maid of honor got up to give her speech and surprisingly, she decided to tell the burnt toast story. She chose that story because she felt it spoke to my character: compassionate to a fault, even with inanimate objects. A classic bleeding heart who paradoxically identified as a Republican. But then, during the course of her speech she inadvertently referred to my hours-long husband as the burnt toast (which he totally is for a multitude of reasons). The entire room erupted with laughter as once again I started crying… for the first time that day. I had held it together when my dad walked me down the aisle, when my husband and I exchanged our vows, and when we put rings on each other’s shaking hands. The only thing that made me weep on the day of my wedding? That damn burnt toast again.
This is our burnt toast life, where nothing is perfect and everything is perfectly wonderful.