The microwave is talking to me. It isn’t the normal chatter. It’s not telling me the time or that my food is hot. No, I am convinced it has something important to say and so far, I’m just not getting it.

It started off with what my wife deemed a malfunction. Every so often, it would flash gibberish across its digital display. As with all things electronic, she throws up her hands in disgust and claims it to be a conspiracy against her. I start from the top and unplug the thing in an attempt to reboot.

The psychrowave is happy with that… for a time. But soon it starts merrily flashing its symbols again.

It always works just fine if you pushed the “Add 30 seconds” button. But if you try to input a time and temperature combination, it freaks out and starts flashing codes. Maybe it’s just tired. “Add 30” is easy. It doesn’t require complex computations and hard math… it’s just 30 seconds. We can all do life in 30 second increments.

No one else in the house appreciates the fact that our microwave needs to rest. They huff and hoot about how we need a new one. But me – I can relate to wearing down and needing a rest. Life can be exhausting and I’m sure heating food on command is hard work.

Then the sounds started. The psychrowave began calling to me during the night. Miscellaneous beeps emanated from our kitchen during the wee hours of dark. Because of my hearing loss, I was immune to the agony. But the others were upset and began unplugging it every night. This saddens me because the poor thing is trying to communicate and I just don’t know what it needs.

This morning I saw my name.

In one of its cycles of gibberish I swear it flashed “Mark” followed by something I interpreted as “Robot chicken.” It dawned on me that what we see as gibberish may actually be some complex language… a form of ancient runes! As an aside, it is entirely possible that this new theory is related to the fact that I just read all seven of the Harry Potter books. I’m starting to think the microwave is my horcrux and its gibberish is my parseltongue.

This whole situation is maddening for me and I’m sure my ineptitude at deciphering the code is equally frustrating for the psycrowave. We’ll get there. We will reach an understanding: the microwave and me.

Tonight I’ve spent hours transfixed at the glowing light of its code until I heard something new. A familiar female voice behind me said one of us needed to be replaced…

I’m just not sure which one she meant.