Burnt Toast Theory

Recently furloughed, Jacinta was reinventing herself as host of a new podcast called Bees in Our Bonnet. “It’s received positive notice in the New York Times,” she humble-bragged to her friends, “so I need your help to keep it afloat.” She had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances whom she unapologetically dragged into amateur focus groups, testing the waters for a variety of topics, everything from the Big Leap principle to Emotional Intelligence models.

Tonight, Jacinta had invited Kenneth and Leland, guys she had known since first-year college biology, where the trio had bonded over fetal-pig dissection. And Kendall had brought Marina, a new girlfriend, Jacinta assumed from the careful way they covertly watched each other.

Jacinta glanced warmly at Kendall and Leland. Not just college friends, but guys she had briefly dated and amicably parted ways with. “No flag, no foul” guys. Leland sought the perfect woman, pure of mind and body. The trophy wife fit for the CEO that he aspired to be. They had gone on two dates.

Kendall was big on traveling and having sex in semi-public places. Which made him an interesting conversationalist, but, in her estimation, not husband material. Over the years, she met a number of his girlfriends, all significantly younger. Jacinta couldn’t quite put her finger on why, but tonight’s date Marina seemed mature for her twenty-some years.

The small dinner party finished their second bottle of wine and the talk got around to “burnt toast theory.” Jacinta, their lively host, was cultivating the art of dinnertime discussions. Not so easy these days, with introverts galore and pandemic habits so deeply entrenched.

Rule #1: smartphones go in the basket by the door. Rule #2: they stay there until you leave.

“What do you mean, ‘burnt toast theory’?” Leland asked after dinner. He would be googling the topic now, except for Rule #1.

“Burnt toast?” Kendall piped up. “Is that next on the menu?”

Jacinta laughed and flipped her dreadlocks from her neckline in one easy motion. “Let’s say you accidentally burn your toast that morning and it delays you from taking the flight you had booked. You’re annoyed—until you find out that flight developed engine trouble and crashes. So, what seemed like a bad thing actually worked in your favor.”

Her guests looked engaged. A keeper topic, Jacinta figured. With the guys, anyway. She wasn’t so sure about Marina. Jacinta was delighted—she wanted Gen Z viewpoints—but a little anxious because she had once before offended a young guest.

Kendall swirled the contents of his wine glass. “I don’t get the ‘theory’ part,” he said. “Aren’t you just describing a situation and slapping a fancy name on it?”

Leland moved aside his plate and spread his hands on the tablecloth, now spattered with flecks of purple from the wine and brown from the sauce Béarnaise. “Burnt toast theory sounds like part of the bigger philosophy ‘Everything happens for a reason.’ If that burnt toast thing happened to me,” Leland declared, “I would stop and think, ‘wow, my life was spared.’ And then, being the egotistical bastard that I am, I would say ‘my life was spared for a reason.’” He wore a devilish grin that drew his dinner companions right in.

Jacinta’s eyes flashed to Marina as if to say, “Your turn! now throw in your two cents.” But Marina remained silent, her finger touching a figurine of the candle holder. Jacinta resolved that next time she would spread the word in advance: No lurkers, you must converse. Instead of giving a verbal nudge, she topped up everyone’s wine glass.

Jacinta sat back, forcing herself to pause. She had, after all, contributed the spark. Now she counted on Leland’s naughty tweaks to set the dinner conversation ablaze.

“Right,” Kendall said, “your life was spared for a reason….so you would use it to justify whatever crazy life path you were on.”

“How interesting,” Jacinta said. “No one objected to Leland’s self-description as an egotistical bastard.” She smirked, looking around the table, daring them to say something.

She did think his ego was in the XXL category, but he kept it under control. Heck, maybe he needed that ego to run the small consultancy he had started a decade ago. And he wasn’t just running it; he’d been steadily growing it. He specialized in niche recruitment. To her mind, HR work was one step away from personality theories. Enneagrams, archetypes, stuff like that. She planned to interview Leland as a special guest on her 100th episode, like saving room for dessert.

No one took the bait. Except Leland, who assumed a joking tone of aggrievement. “What, did I come here to be insulted? Bad enough I had to put up with your mediocre wine, Jacinta.”

Everyone laughed because it was actually Leland who’d brought the wine that evening, an entire crate of it, insisting they try this year’s Beaujolais nouveau. Jacinta held her breath, praying no one would digress into oenophilic exegesis, with everyone trying to outdo the other on wine-tasting commentary. Wine tasting bored her to tears.

Don’t pray for change, she scolded herself, BE the change.

So she plunged ahead to get the conversation back on track. “Okay, maybe burnt toast isn’t a ‘theory’ like Einstein’s relativity, but I do find it intriguing, don’t you? The notion of disaster averted because of one little, aggravating thing.”

She absentmindedly reached out and adjusted a small figurine at the base of the candle holder. Her life was full of little, aggravating things, like this cheap little figure that never stayed properly in place.

Her movement startled Marina, who quickly resettled herself and smoothed her linen napkin.

Jacinta had noticed Marina admiring the candle holder earlier. It was a vintage Mexican terracotta circle of friends, a cute thing she’d picked up at a garage sale. The candle was small and did not shed much light, but she trotted it out for every dinner party.

There, she got the figurine adjusted.

As host of a new show, she daydreamed about her second career, and was always alert for ideas. In the middle of the night, she sometimes woke up and jotted down bizarre dreams, hoping to discover more material for Bees in Our Bonnet. And if not her own eccentric dreams, why not gather friends and get them a little drunk and/or stoned and spouting big ideas—just like college days?

Perhaps she could find someone with a stunning example of burnt toast theory, and her next episode would be all set.

“Now that you mention it,” Kendall said, knitting his brow, “I was getting ready to come over to tonight’s party. I got all dressed up and then noticed a stain down the side of my pants. Oh yes, it was a drive-by splashing during that last big rainfall. So I had to stop and change my whole outfit, and that meant by the time I drove over to pick up Marina, the construction blockage on Main Street had already been stopped for the day, so ta-dah! Disaster averted. We could drive over here to Jacinta’s without any delay.”

Everyone groaned. “Anti-climactic,” Leland declared.

“Come on, Kendall,” Jacinta said, “You gotta have something more compelling than that.” Her voice was warm and friendly, even when she chided someone. She was a gentle gatekeeper. Her eyes flickered to Marina the Lurker, wanting to draw her into the conversation. Equal time for every speaker was an ideal so hard to achieve. Unless she got anal about it and used a timer or a talking-stick, like she used to do as a summer camp counsellor.

This was a problem with Gen Z: they lacked initiative. Or bravery. Marina was so much younger and more timid than anyone else at the table. The Gen Z kids were cosseted. They could shelter in mommy’s arms. Not like the tough latch-key kids of Jacinta’s generation.

“Whaa-aat?” Kendall said, blushing. “I was asked to come up with a real-life example and that’s the best I can do. I hate to say it, but the disasters I avert are very mundane.” He smiled sheepishly. “Am I wrong? Maybe this is a problem as we enter our middle age. Our lives become that much more boring.”

Jacinta saw Kendall’s eye dart to Marina, checking for approval, maybe daring her to jump in. But Marina sipped Beaujolais instead. Inwardly, Jacinta groaned. What a conversational deadbeat!

Leland said, “Or we’re too busy saving the world to take special note of the disaster averted. We’re all forward-looking. I for one have huge pressure to be hunting to fill the next aerospace executive vacancy.”

Marina nodded. “Yes, I can believe you’re under such pressure you don’t have time to stop and reflect. I can barely remember what I did last month.”

“Well put,” Jacinta affirmed, delighted that finally the wallflower had at last spoken up. Again, she reminded herself not to make a big fuss because her guest seemed a little shy. She rose from the table and motioned for everyone to do so. “Maybe we should have a moment of silence as we collect our dinner plates… and see if we can recall any other disaster-averted stories.”

Once the plates were stacked on the sideboard, Marina announced, “I have a story.”

Eyes widened. Guests found places to sit or stand, exchanging glances with quiet anticipation.

“It’s a second-hand story,” Marina began. “Have you heard of Seth MacFarlane? The guy who created that show Family Guy?”

They nodded, even those who hadn’t watched a single episode.

“Well, I read somewhere that, on the morning of September 11, 2001, he was scheduled to be on American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane that was hijacked and flown into the World Trade Center.”

Jacinta and Kendall stopped in their tracks and stared at Marina, recognition dawning on their faces. “Oh yes… yes,” they whispered.

Leland took charge. “Hang on. What was the burnt toast?” he challenged.

Marina frowned. “Um, I forget exactly… maybe his agent told him the wrong time? Or he was hungover?”

They were at the sideboard—and Leland ducked out and brought in the basket where the dinner guests had deposited their phones. “Apologies to our gracious host,” Leland said.

Jacinta shrugged. Rule #2 would be broken, but sometimes you had to go with the flow.

As one, they dived in and retrieved their devices. Within two shakes, everyone verified Marina’s story.

“As soon as you said it, I remembered having heard something like this,” Kendall said. “You have an amazing memory! None of us remembered the details—and you weren’t even born then, were you?”

“I was born January 2002.” Marina crossed her arms. “Fully into the second millennium.” She chuckled. “Unlike you Gen X oldies.”

“A perfect example. Brava!” Jacinta clapped twice. “You get first choice of dessert.” In the kitchen, as she laid out a tray with fruit and cupcakes, she revoked her earlier opinion about Marina. This woman was younger and her skin was a little darker than anyone else’s. And she had a voice and could jump in when needed. Nicely rounding out the range of opinions she sought.

“Here’s dessert,” Jacinta said, setting the tray before her guests. “Take your pick.” She went to make espressos. The MacFarlane anecdote would be a good example to cite for her podcast Bees in Our Bonnet with its burnt toast episode. But she still didn’t have someone to interview—someone who had a real-life burnt-toast story. She sighed. If only.

***

“Thank you for the meal, Jacinta. It was delicious.” Marina made her way to the door. “It was a pleasure meeting you. Good luck with the podcast.”

Kendall held the door open for her. “Nightcap?” He raised one eyebrow.

“Um, I have an early morning tomorrow,” Marina lied.

Kendall drove her home in silence. Or near silence, because he had to catch the scores.

Marina chewed her lip. Her host was such a bold, vivacious woman. Marina had really wanted to live up to expectations. But then she’d given Marina a funny look when she caught her studying the terracotta figurine. As if she sensed Marina’s story, and wanted to get at it, like squeezing toothpaste out of a tube.

So, Marina had used her decoy story.

It was either that or share her own burnt-toast story. Marina would never forget that November day in 2012. She’d made a special thing for Grade 4 art class, using a few terracotta figurines to create a Cinderella diorama. The cardboard box had been cut away to make a scene, and she’d painted it dark blue and glued on a few sequins for stars. But she couldn’t get the figurines to stick in place. In the morning, she had to re-glue them. This meant she was delayed getting to school. Instead of taking the bus, she begged for a ride. As Mama drove nearer the school, she encountered police cars, ambulances, and firetrucks. “I’m heading back home, sweetie,” Mama said. “I don’t know what’s happening, but we’ll be safer at home.”

There had been a school shooter that day.

Her personal disaster had been averted, Marina thought, but it was not a story she was ready to share as light after-dinner entertainment for a bunch of people she’d just met. The loss of friends and classmates had cast a long shadow over the school, the town, the state. Survivor’s guilt became a fact of life for every kid she knew. Mama could never speak about “the incident” without reaching out to put an arm around her daughter. Marina herself used to get too choked up to speak. She especially couldn’t share her background with people who assumed she was simply that Connecticut girl who was so starved for sun that she traveled right across the country to study at sunny, happy UCLA.

She would forever bear the stain of the Sandy Hook school shootings. She would forever fall silent when certain topics arose.

The End