How Waffle Won Someone Else's Birthday

Newsletter 2019-06-03

There's never a good time to lose a fridge, but an especially bad time to lose one is right before you have twenty-five people over to your house for a triple birthday party. As I stared down that scenario earlier this week, I realized the only upside was the effort I was about to save. It’s hard work to ruin each kid’s childhood individually, but it’s fairly efficient to wreck three childhoods at once with a single missing appliance. There would be no silver lining here, but there could be a stainless steel one, and it would be fingerprint resistant and on backorder in a massive warehouse next to the Ark of the Covenant and whatever else the store had no intention of ever delivering, shipping order be damned.

Last Sunday, we knew where the new fridge was: in the store, less than a mile from our house. We picked this model specifically because it was in stock and ready to be delivered right away. Well, “right away” as in later that week. Apparently fridges, like guns, come with a three…