Unwanted Phone Call

On the way home a couple of days ago I got one of those phone calls that send 14,000 thousand thoughts through my brain all at once.  Not one of those thoughts could have guessed what happened.  My wife simply said, “I’ve done something bad.”  I thought things like, she left the basement door open and our 9 month old fell down the stairs, or she cut a finger off with a knife or something like that.  Not even close.  Apparently she had heard somewhere (probably the Internet) that you can sterilize a toothbrush in the microwave.  While I will not argue with that idea there was a complication with this particular toothbrush.  It was Caleb’s toothbrush.  A synonym for “Caleb” is “Thomas the Train”.  If you have never experienced a Thomas the Train toothbrush you really should get one sometime (for your toddler).  While cleaning his teeth he can listen to the Thomas the Train theme song playing from the toothbrush.  Once in a while the song gets muffled when the toothbrush goes too far into his mouth.  It was a nice toothbrush, until it when into the microwave.  There is of course a sound chip and a battery in the toothbrush. Lisa didn’t think of this when putting it in.  Batteries don’t like to be microwaved.   So I opened windows and vented the house with fans and took the microwave outside to clean it.  The smell was awful.  We put water, cinnamon, and vanilla in the microwave and ran it for a few minutes.  That seemed to help with the smell.  There are warnings in all the owner’s manuals that no one ever reads that say do not put a battery in a microwave oven.  Or in a fire or this or that.  But nowhere does it say what to do if it has already happened.  Maybe you should leave the microwave door shut and just get a new one.  This whole story reminds me of a book my brother let me read years ago.  It was called It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It by Robert Fulghum.  If you enjoyed this story you would enjoy that book.  He also wrote All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.