Understanding the Crock-pot

I’m here today to get something off my chest...something that’s been eating away at me through weeks of tedium, months of quarantine, and years on a presidential rollercoaster of which I cannot seem to get off.

Crock-pots.

I don’t get it. I don’t understand them. People love these things. People give them as gifts— wait, no—

PEOPLE WANT TO RECEIVE THEM AS GIFTS!

I think for a while I subconsciously blocked crock-pots out of brain completely because they seemed like something everyone who turned thirty suddenly needed, and as I approached the big “three-oh” (now in monthly increments), they loomed omnipresent like a little dark cloud over my sad, misguided life, teetering ever more and more each day to a drone of domesticity and book-clubs and baby showers.

I could never let crock-pots in.

But as I look back on my crock-pot-less past, I believe it may go even deeper than this, if you can believe it.

“Turn the crock-pot on for me at four,” my mother would say. Or “I’ve got something in the crock-pot for dinner tonight.”

The word sent shudders up my spine.

I didn’t want to touch the crock-pot, let alone eat from it! So no, I will not turn the crock-pot on at four, and I shall make myself a P, B and J because I refuse to touch OR eat anything that comes out of a device titled CROCK-POT.

“Crock”=crocodile

“Crock”=imposter

“Crock”=just a few letters off from “crotch”

There are just so many awful word-associations, and I refuse to believe there isn’t a more suitable name at the ready besides “crock-pot.”

Imagine my dismay—my CHAGRIN, if I may be so obliged as to insert a ten-dollar SAT- word—when, as a bridesmaid to my dear friend at her bridal shower, it was my job to unwrap her gifts and hand them to her so that they may be showcased and photographed and fawned over by heavily Mimosa-ed middle-aged women as though they were something they had never before seen in their lives, and items which only the bride could ever deserve to possess.

Imagine my CHAGRIN, as I ripped off the shiny white foil to reveal a bulky, heavy, tasteless box that could only be home to one singular device: a dreaded, tacky crock-pot.

For joy! I thought, eyes a-rolling. A crock-pot for you to make a lazy, mushy, goopy dinner for your lazy, mushy, goopy new husband in your lazy, mushy, goopy new marriage!

A crinkle of disgust in my nose, I hauled the large box over my head and placed it in the arms of the bride, who held it high to be adored and fawned over by its adoring, undeserving fans.

Crock-pots...ha!

They’ll never take me alive. I’d sooner boil my own skin in a REGULAR pot of water on a REGULAR old stove than own a crock-pot.

You know what crock-pots are sometimes called?

Slow-cookers.

Slow-cookers.

Gosh-darn, I’m an American, and I want it NOW. FAST. NOT SLOW. FAST! FAST! FAST!

I’m more than happy with my Lean Cuisines and MSG-filled Ramen noodles. If they keep me from becoming one more statistic—one more bright young woman fallen prey to the domestication of the crock-pot...then by golly, I’ll eat them every day for the rest of my (probably-shorter-due-to-eating-Lean-Cuisines-and-Ramen-Noodles-every-day-for-the-rest-of- my-life) life.

I cannot tell you what a weight it is off my shoulders to have these feelings out in the open. And now that I’ve gotten them out there and cast light onto this demon, I can see for certain that I do NOT simply have an irrational anger toward a kitchen appliance stemming from my fear of turning thirty.

Obviously.

Because like, thirty is the new twenty, right?

Never mind.

Back to crock-pots.

The conclusion of crock-pots.

I do not like crock-pots. I do not support crock-pots. I do not condone crock-pots.

I do not like them hear nor there, I do not like them anywhere, such as in my kitchen, and at my friend’s bridal shower, and in catalogues, and ESPECIALLY...

Especially not in online ads that are clearly geared toward women approaching a certain age.

I rest my case.