Quirky Flash Chronicles

MVANNP REPORTING

We got a new coffee maker, folks, and it’s been more dramatic than a reality show about appliances.

The old one? Perfectly functional, in the way a rusty nail is “perfectly functional” at holding up a picture—if the picture is of your crumbling will to live. It brewed coffee every day like a loyal but deeply depressed butler: showed up on time, never complained, just sighed heavily and handed you a mug of sad brown water. Multiple pots when necessary, zero drama—unless you count the time my wife threatened to divorce it for “emotional negligence.” Was I cranky because I hadn’t slept, or because the coffee tasted like melted asphalt and broken dreams? Science may never know.

No matter what beans we sacrificed to it—Ethiopian single-origin, Colombian unicorn tears, even the fancy Jamaican stuff that costs more per ounce than therapy—it all came out tasting like it had been filtered through a gym sock worn during hot yoga. And programmable? Ha! My wife’s daily morning monologue went something like: “This tastes like despair, and I have to manually birth it with my own two trembling hands.” Romantic, right?

Cut to Christmas at my parents’ house, which looked like a Hallmark movie and a Michael’s craft store had a baby and then detonated glitter everywhere. Mom clearly eavesdropped on our caffeine sob stories because under the tree was one suspiciously medium-sized box addressed to us adults. (New family rule: kids get all the loot, grown-ups get socks and quiet resentment. I’m fully on board. Kids > adults, fight me.)

The day after Christmas I was in the marital doghouse for “forgetting” to get my wife a gift (long story, bad strategy, zero defense). She, naturally, got me something anyway because she’s a monster who follows rules only when it’s inconvenient for me. Kids were up at 4:47 a.m. ready to vibrate through walls. I started lecturing them about the sacred teenage art of sleeping till noon and immediately regretted it because karma is real and she wakes up early.

Then I spotted the box. It was practically glowing. Angels sang. The box whispered, “Open me, Vann. I am your destiny… and I have buttons.”

Unwrapping it felt like defusing a bomb made of luxury. Six buttons. Two knobs. A lever. A digital display that looked down at me like I was the caveman here. The old machine had one switch: ON/OFF, like it was designed by someone who also thought fire was “newfangled.” I knew, deep in my soul, the manual was going to be 47 pages of humiliation.

First pot: pure magic. The aroma floated upstairs like a heavenly choir wearing flannel. My wife came down looking like a Disney princess who’d been promised actual good coffee. We sat there grinning like lunatics, sipping perfection while the kids reenacted World War III with wrapping paper in the background and the TV screamed Bluey at jet-engine volume. Eye contact was made. My Christmas sins? Forgiven on the spot. Beans were still cheap gas-station garbage, but whatever—this thing was programmable. Life was about to level up.

Thirty-one minutes later (yes, I set a timer like a psychopath), the coffee was… room temperature. Like it had given up on life and decided to cosplay lukewarm tap water. The old machine’s coffee tasted like regret heated to volcanic levels; this fancy traitor couldn’t keep a pot hot long enough to finish one cup. I twisted the “Carafe Temp” knob from M to H like I was cranking a safe. Brewed again. Still serving sadness at exactly body temperature. Called my mom—same model, hers stays hot for two hours. She said it in the tone of a woman who has never once lost at anything, ever.

Manual? One smug line: “Adjust carafe temperature with this knob.” Wow, groundbreaking stuff, truly the Da Vinci Code of hot beverages.

My wife took one sip of the tepid betrayal and looked at me like I’d murdered her childhood pet. “Why is this coffee cold?” she hissed. “What is even the point of owning a coffee maker that can’t keep coffee hot? Are we peasants now?” I panicked, ran to the store, bought $18 beans that probably required a blood oath, brewed again. Tasted like heaven… for exactly thirty-one minutes, then back to “lukewarm disappointment soup.”

By day four I was feral. Slept maybe eleven minutes total, haunted by visions of returning to the old machine like a battered spouse. The kids, because I’d jinxed it, were now sleeping till 10 a.m. and required bribery involving cocoa and screen-time hostage negotiations. I announced to no one in particular, “I am very angry at this coffee maker,” which is peak adulthood.

My wife, calm as a sniper, said, “Take it to Starbucks. They know things.”

So there I was, standing in Starbucks at 8 a.m. like a man confessing to a priest, holding a carafe like it was evidence in a murder trial. Asked for the manager. Got the manager. Asked delicately for their wisest barista. Turns out she was the wisest barista. Her professional diagnosis: “If it’s not in our manual, buddy, you’re on your own.” Inspirational.

Drove home muttering. Something my mom said, something my wife said, and the phrase “you absolute moron” echoed in my skull. Then—lightning bolt.

You have to PROGRAM THE CARAFE TEMPERATURE TOO, YOU DOLT.

Two button presses I’d completely missed. Boom. Fixed.

Now every morning the machine brews while we’re still upstairs wrestling socks like they’re greased eels. The aroma drifts up the stairs like a five-star Uber for happiness. Coffee is hot. Coffee stays hot. Coffee is delicious—even the Walmart stuff tastes like it went to private school now.

The psychological damage? Healing nicely. My wife loves me again. The kids still sleep in (thanks, past-me). And thirty-one minutes later? Still scalding.

Moral of the story: always read the manual. Or just suffer beautifully until divine intervention hits you in the face with two hidden menu options.

10/10, highly recommend both the coffee maker and public humiliation as a path to enlightenment.