The little microwave that could

Our little microwave has been with me since my first year in college - my father presented it as the perfect going-away present for a dorm room-bound university newbie, and it got plenty of use as the agent for late-night popcorn munchies, hot cocoa on cold winter nights, and the infamous ramen noodles that remain a staple for college kids looking for a quick, cheap meal.  The little white microwave followed me obediently to graduate school, and then to Philadelphia - working maybe a little slower than some of the new-fangled machines out there, but still good enough for us.  

Lately, though, it's been a bit more of struggle to coax it to work than all the years before.  A couple of weeks ago, the start button stopped working.  We now have to press the little 'automatic' buttons instead to get it to go - baked potato, popcorn, and beverage all have their own buttons, the microwave's  best (normally underestimated) guess at the time it'll take to actually cook a baked potato, pop a bag of popcorn, or heat up a beverage.  This is now the only way we have of turning on our little machine.   And these timers, of course, are often not exactly the time we need, and so we have to stand, twiddling our thumbs, and wait to shut off the buzz of the box at just the right time.  As if that weren't enough, a few days ago, the stop button seems to have picked up a little bit of an eccentricity that would be charming if it weren't for the questionable health effects - it now only works when the microwave is off.  In other words, we can clear the old timer with it to start a new timer, but we can't seem to actually stop the microwave with it.  Which means that we just have to open the door to stop the microwave while it's running.  We can only hope that those little nuke waves aren't going to come back to haunt us later with bodily manifestations I'm much too sqeemish to even mention here.  

My sister once lived for two years without a microwave, and I'm starting to picture us in such a state...panicking as I cradle my tepid tea in an  apartment growing colder by the day.  If our plans pan out, we'll only be here for a few short months yet...a year, at most!  I'm fighting for my old, dirty, underdog microwave to hang on for dear life until the last days of Philly.  That's all we need.  It's lasted me this long, surely another few months isn't too much to ask!