Burning Skewers

When I cook a cake and use a skewer to test if it is cooked, I break the skewer in half, when I am done and I throw it in the rubbish. There is no secret message, or hidden ritual, in the snapped skewer, just a desire to make it smaller so it doesn’t pierce the rubbish bag on rubbish days, tearing the liner, enabling piles of refuse to tumble out onto the front path, or the footpath, as I transfer the rubbish from kitchen rubbish bin to the outside rubbish bin.

Some days I even snap them into four pieces, they must be the days that I feel more uneasy with the world – or feel reckless, or would that be powerful?

Not such a big deal, you would think.

However, I keep getting into trouble for this, from Sam. The electric starter on our oven no longer works and Sam uses burning skewers to light the oven now. Bad me.

“How many times do we have to go through this with you?” asks Sam.

“Do you want a number?”

Plain look from Sam in return. He has no sense of humour when he is telling me off. Not sure if that is a Sam thing, or a boyfriend thing in general?

“You are serious?”

“Yes, of course…”

“Listen to yourself?”

“The environment is a serious business,” says Sam. “You bang on about it all the time.”

“Someone has to?”

“But apparently it doesn’t apply to you?”

“What are you saying?”

“You are a hypocrite.”

“I’m hurt,” I say. I fain a debilitating wound. “It is a skewer.”

“From small things,” says Sam.

I laugh. “I thought you were doing a banking ad.” I do the square hand gesture in front of myself.

He doesn’t laugh. “I think you will find it is a superannuation ad.”

“Okay,” I say.

“Okay,” says Sam. He gives me one of ‘those’ looks where he slightly tunes his head so he is looking at me, predominantly, with one eye. Eye lid slightly closed for effect.

“In the yellow porcelain box on the mantle above the stove, where the matches and the fire sticks are kept?”

“Now you are getting it,” says Sam.

“Noted.”

“Do you think you will remember?’ asks Sam.

“It is just a skewer.”

“So simple to remember,” says Sam.

“So simple,” I say.

“And yet, in the bin every time…”

“I’ll remember.”