Dealing with disappointment:

Everyone has that one gift that they never got as a child. For some of us it is a pony, or it could possibly be Malibu Barbie. For me, it is an Easy Bake Oven.

To me, the Easy Bake Oven was everything I desired to emulate as a child. I wanted to be a grown-up and be allowed to mix ingredients and use an oven. Sadly, my mother refused to get me one.

I can still remember her reasoning behind it. “It’s just a plastic box with a lightbulb in it. You’ll make a bunch of tiny food and then run out of mixes. Do you know how expensive those little mixes are?” Obviously, mom, I didn’t know the price of things when I was under ten years old.

Needless to say, I never got my Easy Bake Oven as a child. Now, as an adult, I like to bring it up to my mom. When she asks me what I want for my birthday, I tell her I still want an Easy Bake Oven. Same for Christmas, Mother’s Day, and so on. For clarity, as an adult I can agree with my mother’s reasoning to not buy me one.

Though this seems like a sad story of how my childhood was never complete because I never got the opportunity to make tiny cookies with all my friends, it has a twist.

Making things right:

In the late evening of June seventeenth, I ventured from my place of employment to my sister’s house to get my son. When I arrived, an out of the ordinary request was bestowed upon me by my sister. “Would you like to drive to mom’s house? She is going to give me some vitamins.” Indeed, this was a strange thing to want to do at ten at night, but I obliged.

The evening air was like any June evening on the southern east coast. The wind was strong and the temperatures had barely fallen from the preceding day. The air was thick and almost difficult to take in. I started my car and began to attempt to lower the temperature by rolling down my windows. My mother only lives about a mile from my sister, so the ride was short.

When we arrived at my mother’s house, all was usual. The lights were dim but not off. The television was on, but nobody was watching. I walked through the front door and living-room into the kitchen. I shouted across the house, “I’m going to make coffee, does anyone want some?” I heard an array of yeses from my mother, sister, and uncle (who happened to be visiting). As I scooped coffee grounds and deposited them into the filter, I heard an odd reactionary phrase from the living-room adjacent to me.

“Oh my God! Is that what I think it is!?” My sister exclaimed to my mother across the house in the office. My mother came running out.

“Shush! You weren’t supposed to see that!” My mother responded.

I peeked my head around the corner to see a large purple box on the ottoman that my eyes scanned over and didn’t notice at all. I looked back and forth across the living-room for anything out of the ordinary. I said, “Did you see a bug or lizard or something?”

Both my sister and mother glared at me with disbelief that I couldn’t tell what was going on. Then, it struck me. There, in front of my eyes, was the large purple box. In the middle of the living-room on the aforementioned ottoman was a brand new Easy Bake Oven.

“No you didn’t!” I exclaimed, looking at the satisfied smile on my mother’s face. I was so excited! My son and I could make tiny little cookies together and the only logical next step would be to buy a Shrinky-Dink thing (whatever those are).

We put the Easy Bake Oven in my trunk and I brought it home with me.

Living Un-Lived Memories:

Today, I decided to give my new toy a little test drive. I unloaded the “oven” from it’s previous home (the box) and introduced it to the home that we would now share. I pulled the plastic hunk of baking machine out of it’s tight plastic sleeve and set it on my dining-room table. As I read the directions and started to “preheat” the “oven,” I hollered for my son to join me in the kitchen.

The menu for the afternoon was miniature chocolate chip cookies. The procedure and materials list for this recipe was fairly easy: chocolate chip cookie mix and one teaspoon of water. Noticing I do not own a set of measuring spoons, I decide to improvise. I find a syringe in my medicine cabinet for children’s motrin and it is marked with a five milliliter mark (which is one teaspoon). I let my son pour the powdered cookie dough into a small bowl as I add the water. The mixing process was easy but strange. I folded cookie dough powder and water with a rubber spatula until the texture was uniform. Once completely blended, I then transferred the concoction into a small sandwich bag for easy dispensing. I distributed the mixture evenly into ten “bite-sized” cookies on the teeny tiny baking sheet and (after twenty minutes of preheating) submitted it into the “baking position” with the provided utensil that resembled a peel for a brick pizza oven.

For an eternally long nine minutes I awaited the moment that my timer went off and I could utilize the same strange “peel” to remove my mini cookies from the “oven.” I paced my kitchen, told my son how excited I was to eat the cookies we made together, and washed the dishes.

Finally, I hear it. Ding! Ding! The timer finally reached its final seconds and my heart skipped a beat. I immediately turn the alarming noise of the timer off and grab the utensil provided for the removal of the cookie sheet. Just then, I remembered the recommendation in the instructions to place the pan in the “cooling chamber” for five minutes before removal.

Again, I endure the painstaking waiting game again. Pacing the kitchen, changing the channel to keep my son entertained for a brief period of time. Then it rings again. Ding! Ding! The sound alarms and I jump to remove the cookies from the “cooling chamber.” The results were less than charming.

As I removed the tray, the cookies had become a cookie. The minuscule tray was covered in a sheet of brown hard cookie dough and the smell was less than satisfactory. This wasn’t the true test, though. I had to taste one. I tried to pick one up from the tray to find they were stuck. I pried with my fingers and eventually resorted to a rudimentary tool, a fork. I removed one cookie and raised it to my mouth. The journey the cookie took from the tray to my mouth was a useless one. The closer it came to my lips, the more I thought of the whole process. I started to question the integrity of the food I was preparing to eat. “How long was this packaged before it came to me?” “Are the ingredients non-perishable or should I be cautious?” “What if moisture got through the seal!” “What temperature were these cooked to?”

I slowly placed the cookie back on the table in disbelief of the fact I couldn’t go through with it. My son came back into the kitchen and asked if the cookies were done. I showed him the tray and he asked for one. I couldn’t say no. I handed him the tiny, unsightly cookies and he was ecstatic. His eyes lit up and his smile broadened across his whole face. He ate cookie after cookie and told me how much he loved them (and me). At this moment, I realized I lost the last bit of my childhood.

I am twenty-one years old and needed to use an Easy Bake Oven to realize that I will never experience true and pure happiness. The more I think about it, the more I wish I had never gotten an Easy Bake Oven and over time I just let go. The one thing that kept my childhood spirit in tact was the unknown expectation of what tiny treasures an Easy Bake Oven beheld.

Watching my son indulge in the happiness that I wished to experience in my childhood was the ultimate closure. I got to see the last of my childhood wishes be fulfilled and watch the beginning of my son’s wishes come to life.

There will always be a place in my heart for the Easy Bake Oven, and I will always remember the joy it has brought me. I do not plan on getting rid of it, and my son and I will enjoy countless memories using it together; this time, I get to give happiness instead of receive. I cant ask for a better gift than that.