I struggled; I shuffled with the buttons, and a splatter of batter went everywhere.

Damn this thing; it would never work. With another sigh of exasperation, I pressed ‘the little red button’ at the top, and it went off again. This oddly-shaped gadget never worked.

Those metallic whiskers, and the elegant shape—oh, it’s my bane. The wire that sticks out of it like a scraggly tail, ending in a plug; which ends in an electrical socket is always tangling itself somewhere where it’s not supposed to be!

Another sigh; another press, another splatter, another failure. The sun shined off its plastic surface as I tried to coax the unwilling thing into working.

It was always curled up in a corner of the kitchen when it wasn’t used. There were patterns swirling all over it; culinary ones. It also gave off the air of being professional, all sleek and shiny the way it looked.

But the minute I pressed that infamous red button, all hell broke loose.