Carolyn Quit!

One day she was here, doing a great job.  The next day?  Gone!  No explanation.  She just up and left us high and dry.  It was, to say the very least, a most untimely event.

There hadn’t been so much as a peep to prepare us.  Not even a squeak.  She’d been with us for years and you know how attached you get when someone’s been with you for so long.  They become, really, a part of the family.

It’s safe to say we felt that way about Carolyn.  And we know there’ll never be another like her.

And, boy, have we looked.  And looked.  You start looking around for kitchen timers these days and they’re all electronic.  Carolyn was mechanical.  Seems no one wants to twist the little knob and hear that loud ring-a-ding when the food’s ready. 

There was nothing subtle about Carolyn.  No escaping her insistence.  You either got your buns to the kitchen when she rang or you’d go deaf.  Her bell never stopped. Thirty years with us and she’d never once let us burn a single piece of toast, overcook a chicken or let a pot of rice go dry.

Finally, and after much serious searching, the new, and mechanical, timer is here.  It’s French and the numbers are backwards. Its little ring-a-ding is quite pleasant. It’s just not covered with years and years of patina, affection and heaven knows what else.  In other words, it’s just not Carolyn.