The World According to Chuck

We moved into this house in August 1988, which is 19 years in real estate years, and it was empty. That is, sans appliances of any sort, unless you count toilets, which I don’t think you should.

So we had to buy a lot of stuff, including a washer and dryer, a dishwasher, a stove, a refrigerator, and a trash compactor just because we might as well since we were spending money we theoretically didn’t actually have.

And we bought a microwave, a nice, big one that fit over the stove and provided hours of family fun, not counting the hours it took to install it.

All of these original appliances are now gone, of course, with the exception of the refrigerator, which is hanging in there in a wheezy, drippy kind of way. The microwave died years ago, but since it was kind of a hassle to get in there, and since it functioned as sort of a bread box/place to put food so the dog couldn’t get it, like pizza and/or cookies, it stayed. Stayed and stayed. Not even the clock worked. And after 19 years of hanging out above the stove, and typical Sigars maintenance, it was sort of disgusting.

So, Julie was perusing Craig’s List the other night, looking for fun stuff or free stuff (and maybe a job for me, although she denies this), when she saw this nice over-the-stove, space-saving microwave for sale, for 50 bucks. It looked about the same size, so she went to check it out.

We have another microwave, of course. Microwaves are cheap. In fact, these days you can buy a microwave, a VCR and a DVD player and walk out of the store for less than $100, which is sort of amazing (note to self: idea for a game show where contestants have to guess how much home appliances cost. It would be great).

But these kind of super-large, fancy microwaves are another thing; they can cost hundreds of dollars, all to essentially warm up coffee, so this looked like a deal. Plus, we could get that greasy corpse out of the kitchen.

Craig’s List is a lot of fun, by the way, if you haven’t tried it. It’s for people too lazy to have garage sales, like us. People sometimes just give away good stuff they don’t want to haul down to Salvation Army or the dump, and other times they just want to make a few bucks and give their extraneous stuff a good home.

The microwave seller lived in Harbour Pointe, which is close to my neighborhood but nothing like my neighborhood. It’s home to an acclaimed golf course, and right next to the even more acclaimed Puget Sound (or Possession Sound, if you want to get picky and depending on where exactly you are). There are degrees of real estate value in Harbour Pointe, but let’s just say it’s not hard to drive for blocks and not see a house worth less than a million.

This lady’s house was in that range. She looked like a million bucks, too, Julie said, sort of ageless and beautiful, with the smooth skin that can only come from good genes or a hefty bank account. She’d only had the microwave for three years, she said, but she was remodeling the kitchen and yadda yadda yadda. Fifty bucks and five minutes later, I was hauling a very heavy but non-greasy kitchen appliance up the front steps.

I’ll skip my observations about my wife’s aptitude in finessing a small project into a big one, due to some bizarre idea about doing things right (I would have given up or found a big roll of duct tape), but after reading, measuring, drilling, thinking, lifting, lifting a lot more, re-drilling, re-measuring, and more thinking, and some resting, after about five hours the old microwave was gone and the new one was up.

I’ll skip that because I have another, VERY IMPORTANT observation to make.

It’s not anything you think. So stop. Because it’s not.

Yes, it fit perfectly.

Yes, it works fine.

I had a clue when I was thumbing through the manual, which was not really a manual (hence the five hours) but just basic instructions on not putting small animals in the microwave and how to defrost chicken.

The manual looked a little…hmm. Ordinary. Simple, even. For one thing, the instructions were only in English, which is pretty rare these days.

And there were plenty of phone numbers to call for service, but no Web sites. Also pretty rare these days.

These days.

It was only after installation was complete, and we were admiring our new 50-dollar fancy non-disgusting microwave, that we opened the door and found the sticker that had the serial number and the date of manufacture.

Which was 1995. Which explains a whole lot.

What kind of person sells you a 12-year-old microwave and says it’s only three years old? What kind of person lives in a million-dollar home with a gorgeous view and a plastic surgeon on retainer and sells a complete stranger an appliance that was new when Monica Lewinsky was still delivering pizzas to the Oval Office, Michael Jordon was still playing basketball and O.J. Simpson was still in jail?

Nah. That’s too easy. There’s a better question.

What kind of person lets her get away with it?

*raises hand*