Charred Mornings

A GOOD DAY IN academia should start with a hearty breakfast. I've always thought so. Regardless of nutritional value, the morning meal is an important part of waking up. And it's not that much to ask--crackling crispies, fresh eggs, hot coffee--a few slices of toast.

But the last few years, that all-important element of my morning routine, the toasted slice bread, has met with more abuse that Caspar Weinberger at a Harvard Forum. Innocent slices of ordinary commercial bread are slowly baking drier than the University plans to make this campus. And all by a gleaming chrome technological fiasco with an industrial-size plug that looks like it was salvaged from one of the early electric chairs.

Who bought these toasters? Probably the same person who approved the Canaday design plans. Canaday and Harvard toasters share that elusive "I looked ultra-modern in 1971" quality, although the toasters can occassionally take on a '57 Edsel appearance to particularly hungover toasting enthusiasts.

Harvard toasters are the only ones ever made that fancy themselves to be deadly time bombs when in use. Insert a few English muffins, heave down the industrial-spring-loaded lever, and ...Tick-Tick-Tick. I wonder what would happen if some law student accidentally left one of these things in his mailbox.

"No, really, Officer, it's, uh, a toaster!"

Tick-Tick-Tick. The bomb squad races in, sweating profusely in their shrapnel-resistant suits.

"Don't touch it! Clear the building!" But it's too late. Just as the pudgy fireman who drives the rear end of the big red Cambridge fire truck trundles in, it detonates. Out pop two slightly warm, moderately dehydrated slices of cinnamon raisin.

"See? Hey, could one of you guys push that back down for me? Thanks a lot."

The impact of toasting equipment on undergraduate quality of life can not be underestimated. What's at stake here is a lot more than just the fate of a few pieces of baked dough. What we're talking about is people. What are we really trying to teach our students? Complacency in mediocrity? The beauty of inefficiency? I fervently hope not.

But frankly, I'm embarrassed. How can we expect an eager science student to head out for his day at the labs with the requisite vim and vigor when he leaves his breakfast in the dining hall in the morning feeling unsatisfied, incompetent, unsure of his ability to function meaningfully in his society?

How can we ask the self-confident government scholar to go off to the Kennedy School and attack problems of waste and inefficiency in this great country after showing him the impossibility of lightly browning some American Wonder Bread, which he must then discard with impunity?

And how can we ever hope to impress upon the contemplative VES student the beauty of a proper marriage of form and function when her dining hall toaster, with the facade of an oxyactylene welder, can not even thaw her single Eggo waffle?

Frankly, I'm embarrassed.