blender incident report

two blenders stopped working today. the first one made a click and gave me soup with corners. the second one made the same click, which is how i knew the motor was lying.

sandeep came into the kitchen holding a bag of frozen strawberries. "it only does that when you use it," he said. i told him that was an interesting legal position for a machine with one job. then i put the lid on again and pressed the button.

the blender ran for four seconds. i know because the display said four, and because i counted the pieces of strawberry climbing the wall. there were thirty-one. one of them was stuck above the measurement line, where it had no business being, like it had received a permit.

the click came back. i stopped the machine and took the blade assembly out. underneath it, around the rubber seal, was a strip of black plastic. it was thin enough to bend and thick enough to have been part of something important. i pulled it free and the blender started without complaining.

sandeep said, "so it was the plastic?"

"no," i said. "it was the blender."

this is the part where i usually win by finding the object that caused the problem. today the object was a small black strip, and the problem was that the blender had learned to wait until i trusted it. i put the strawberries in the sink and washed the cup three times. on the third wash, the motor in the dishwasher started.

it sounded exactly like the click.

the blender is now unplugged.