IN MY ELEMENT

When all is said and done, I’m still stuck inside a kettle. And sure, you’ll laugh at this, but it’s just the result of a bit of stupidity, and don’t tell me you haven’t you done anything stupid in your life. One little bit of ignorance, one corner cut, and I’m sure you’ve ended up in worse places than trapped in the confines of a Sunbeam.

How did I get in here? One limb at a time is the answer, if you must know. It’s not as if I tripped and fell down the spout; give me some credit; I just found myself getting into the kettle because it seemed like the best place to be. As long as no one turns it on, I guess I’ll be relatively safe. Did you know how much electricity goes into heating just two cups of water in a kettle? A shitload, that’s how much. And I’m straddling the sinister looking heating element as we speak—literally as we speak, so if you want to get your laughing done, I’d get it over with right now, before I’m broiled inside my own skin, and you’ll be left with a smirk hanging off your lips like a shark with a bit of distastefully mangled meat.

I suppose it could be cleaner in here, too, now that I have the chance to look closely at the walls, if I can call them walls. But I suppose they are now. You just assume, don’t you, that because a kettle’s always boiling, that somehow it kills all the germs and dirt in some crude science-experiment way, but let me tell you, some of the things I’ve seen on the walls in here would frighten a grown man. And these are the things that touch the water that you put into your tea and into your mouth. I don’t even want to think about the bits and pieces that don’t remain stuck to the sides of the kettle.

How long have I been inside here? Long enough. Long enough to have really reflected quite philosophically on the circumstances that led me here. I have resigned myself to the fact that I may spend the rest of my life here. And, you know, I’ve had my moments of panic, my seven-stages-of-whatever, and come out the other side feeling surprisingly good about it all. I’m a fatalist, deep down, and I have reconciled my current position, vis-à-vis inter-appliance. I have ‘made peace’, as someone who far more spiritual than I might say.

So no, in answer to your question, I don’t really need any help. I have made my bed, as they say, and I intend to lie in it. I could murder a cup of tea, though.