Bob pushed the microwave door button. Not hard enough. He tried again and this time the door sprung open happily. He caught it before it made it through its arc, bouncing on the springy hinges like it often did.
He didn't like that microwave door button. He didn't really like any microwave door button. They all seemed so… archaic. Why did they all have to be so hard to push anyway? Microwaves had been around at least 60 years now in some form or another.
'Surely the technology to open them could have evolved just a little in that time' he thought to himself as he put the chilled mug onto the paper towel he had sitting on the inside of the appliance.
It was tea from the night before. He'd found himself entertaining an Indian girl from a bar down the road and had thought it a fine idea to finally break out some Chai that his mother had gifted him over a year previously. Chai, not Chai Tea. The girl had told him that 'chai' just meant 'tea' in Hindi so why would you call it Chai Tea? Thats about the same level of necessary as calling ATMs ATM Machines. Which plenty of people did.
"Plenty of idiots" mused Bob.
So here he was, making the most out of the un-drunk tea. Unlike the the girl who had been very drunk and had passed out on the couch long before the chai had cooled enough to drink. Bob had learned years ago that tea was one of those mysterious and blessed things that could be microwaved later and not lose any of it's quality. Tea and McDonald's cheeseburgers were the best candidates for a quick revitalising dose of microwave radiation. That was his experience. But he didn't have McDonald's much. Despite the course of events that had lead him to make his 2am Chai he was generally a pretty healthy person.
The mug had been in the fridge all day before he'd taken it out about 20 minutes before to warm up on the kitchen bench. He didn't want to crack it by throwing it straight into the heat from the cold. Now it was covered with a thick layer of condensation like the stereotypical iced beer in any number of posters, TV commercials or day dreams.
Bob put the tea in and hit the 1 minute button on the microwave before pausing his brain with a blank 500 yard stare until the beep brought him back to reality. He opened the microwave again (first try this time - small win), the mug still had the condensation on the outside but it was steaming now.
"Are you cold? Are you hot?" Bob said to the mug. "You have no idea, because you're a liquid and aren't intelligent" he went on as he put it back into the microwave for another minute.
As the appliance hummed in the background Bob wondered if other people had similar conversations to their beverages. He decided that he might try writing about it but he'd change his name in the story to Bob because all his stories were about Bob.
The microwave beeped.
