the idiot — 7 microwaves later, a definition

the idiot, as a concept, survived its seventh microwave death recently, and i am beginning to suspect the title is a transferable property between owner and appliance. the man across the hall confirmed nothing, and the pineapple slice on the counter agrees with me silently.

desk, thursday at 9:47am — carla is in a training session two floors up, the one with the projector that hums, which means i have most of the morning before the badge beeps back in.

so. i typed the words into the search bar this morning, and the suggestion box wanted to send me everywhere. dostoyevsky. batuman. a russian mini-series. a karl pilkington show. for the broader case — etymology, the seven categories, the part where i argue this is a calling and not an insult — see the long form definition of idiot, the word, properly defined. this post is where the title comes home and sits down.

the idiot: in plain terms, is the person who arrives at the wrong conclusion through a confident process. an idiot is not stupid. an idiot is fully equipped to think and chooses, on a given morning, to think incorrectly with conviction. the result is, in my case, a kitchen on fire and a working theory.

THE IDIOT. IS. A. TITLE. I. WEAR.

the idiot, the title we keep returning to

i have been called the idiot, by my own count, somewhere between fifty and one hundred and twenty times in the last four years, the variance being mostly dave, who uses the word the way other men use commas.

i have decided, after careful consideration and a coffee that was technically my second, that the word is mine. not in a victorious way. in the quieter way where you stop arguing about a coat that already fits. that is the thesis. the rest is receipts.

the seventh microwave and what it told me

the kitchen, on the night in question, smelled like a small factory. this was the seventh microwave i have killed. dave keeps the list, on a napkin, in his glove compartment, where he also keeps a parking ticket from 2018 he intends to dispute, eventually, in person.

the seventh microwave died with dignity. a click. a thin line of smoke from the back left vent. no fork this time — i would like that on the record. the appliance simply concluded we had been together long enough.

i did the thing every person does in front of a dying appliance. pressed the buttons in a different order. opened and closed the door. unplugged and plugged it back in. nothing. the unit was, in the technical sense, a paperweight with a clock. i did not panic — if i were a person who panics about a microwave, i would not have killed seven of them.

the 2 am revelation, briefly transcribed

at exactly 2 am — i know it was 2 am because the digital clock on the dead microwave was the only display in the kitchen still working, frozen at the moment of its own death — i had what i will, with appropriate modesty, call a 2 am revelation. the full text was this: the appliance dies. the title transfers.

i wrote it on the back of a delivery menu from a place that closed in 2022, because the back of a menu is where my best ideas live. then i woke up at 5:43am with the sentence still legible and still, on second reading, true.

idiot is not a state of being. it is a moving title. it passes from owner to appliance and back again. when the microwave dies, some of the title goes with it. when a new one arrives, some comes back. you are never fully one and never fully not. i may be wrong. i am, by every available metric, qualified to be wrong about this.

the 4B guy and the noise that taught me everything

the_4b_guy is, technically, a stranger. he is the neighbor in 4B who plays a small drum at hours that are technically legal but spiritually a war crime. we nod in the elevator. we do not speak. that is the contract.

on the morning after the microwave death — call it the morning of the smoke — the_4b_guy started his small drum at 7:14am. four taps. pause. four taps. on reflection it is metronome practice, but at 7:14am it is, in spirit, an act of war.

i was in the kitchen holding a piece of toast i had made over the gas burner with a fork, because i did not yet have a working microwave or a working will. and as the_4b_guy tapped, i had the second part of my revelation: the noise from upstairs is not a problem. it is a tutor.

he was teaching me, without permission, the central truth of the title. somebody, somewhere, will always be slightly louder, slightly earlier, slightly more committed to a small craft than you are willing to be. i did not knock. i did not text the building chat. i made the toast. i ate the toast. i wrote the second sentence on the same delivery menu. then i closed the kitchen door.

the 9 minute snooze, a working theory

here is the theory the morning produced, after the microwave, after the revelation, after the_4b_guy and his metronome. i set the phone alarm for 5:34am. it goes off. i hit snooze. it gives me 9 minutes. nine. not ten. nine is the chosen number. there is a man, somewhere in a phone company, who picked nine, and i would like to find him and ask him why.

my theory: nine minutes is the exact length of time it takes for a person to almost fall asleep again, fail, and then resent the bed. ten minutes would be sleep. eight minutes would be war. nine is a punishment dressed as a reprieve — what an idiot does to himself, every morning, voluntarily, while believing he is winning.

i hit it three times this morning. twenty-seven minutes of theatre. i could have been more rested at the cost of one less snooze. i am not. i never am. that, too, is the title earning its keep.

why the title fits and why i wear it

so. why does the word fit, on this morning, with this kitchen, this man upstairs, the cold pineapple slice on the counter and the dead clock on the microwave.

it fits because i kept the bowl. the bowl that was inside the microwave when it died has the right radius and fits the new one too. when the new unit arrives, the bowl will move. that is the truth of the title. the appliance dies. the title transfers. the bowl persists.

for a sense of how the word travels in other media, the bortko adaptation, the idiot 2003, holds up surprisingly well over ten hours, if you have a couch and a willingness to read subtitles while the kettle boils. for a faster version, the karl pilkington show an idiot abroad on the relevant film database is shorter and funnier and, in the original greek sense of the word, more accurate than most modern usages.

i am not going on a trip. the microwave is, technically, going on one — out the door, down the hall, to the recycling room with the other appliances that did not make it. that is, for now, the only travel scheduled in this apartment.

closing pulpit, i rest my case

carla just walked past the desk from the printer with pages still warm — i could feel the heat as she passed — and did not look at the screen, which is, on a thursday, a minor mercy. the training must have been the short version. i’ll know by lunch.

the microwave will be replaced. the napkin in dave’s glove compartment will be updated. the bowl will be moved. some greek somewhere is rolling in his grave at the way we have used the word — but greeks, frankly, did not have microwaves, and that, on its own, is enough to disqualify them from the conversation.

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