“What’s this thing?” my son asked, pulling a grooved square of black metal from the back of the cupboard.
He was on a quest for a frying pan, after discovering that his favourite pan was beyond saving. In other words, it was in the sink and had yet to be resurrected, clean and shining, to its place in the cupboard. The kid cooks, but he doesn’t clean.
It took me a few seconds to figure out what it was, but the light slowly dawned – the thaw-master. My husband and I had procured one at a trade show back in the 1990s, when we were rendered speechless by watching the miraculous thawing tray reduce an ice cube to water in mere seconds.
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In a great state of excitement we had rushed home and melted ice cubes until our eyes crossed. The next day we invited the neighbour-hood over for an ice cube melting party. It was great. For melting ice cubes.
I continued to thaw our hamburger and steaks in the fridge overnight or in the microwave, like I always had. Eventually the question arose of what exactly we needed all those melted ice cubes for. Neither of us knew.
“So what does it do?” asked my son.
“This baby can melt an ice cube in 30 seconds flat. It’s really quite amazing. You want to see?”
“We own a piece of metal for melting ice cubes?”
“In 30 seconds or your money cheerfully refunded.”
“Do you think I could fry an egg on it?”
“I don’t know why you avoid washing dishes. It doesn’t take any time at all. In fact, I bet I can wash your frying pan in the time it takes this thaw-master to melt an ice cube.”
“OK,” he said, finally sounding excited. Teenagers are like that. They act all tough and cool, but when it comes down to it, they are still little kids at heart.
While my son watched an ice cube melt before his very eyes, I wildly scrubbed the frying pan, soapsuds flying in my wake, before triumphantly presenting it to him, calf roper style, just as the last of the ice cube turned to puddle.
“Impressed?” I asked him.
“Totally,” he said, taking the frying pan and heading for the stove.
An hour later his older brother wandered into the kitchen, noted the dirty frying pan in the sink with much horror and then examined the thaw-master sitting on the island.
“What’s this?” I heard him ask his brother.
“I forget what it’s called, but it’s amazing. You put an ice cube on it and Mom washes the frying pan.”
Shannon McKinnon is a farmer, columnist and freelance writer from Dawson Creek, B.C.
