Despite the stereotypical relationship prevelant in Western culture, I get on very well with my mother-in-law. She’s a retired Russian teacher who gardens during the summer and crochettes through winter — fresh veggies, beautiful flowers, and handmade Christmas tree ornaments.

I like her a lot.

She’s not very technologically savvy, though. We all love her, but — bless her sweet Polish heart — she just doesn’t feel comfortable with much of anything electronic.

My in-laws got their first microwave oven a couple of years ago (?!). It’s a little, basic job, with a manual timer egg-timer type mechanism and limited settings.

I could sense disaster in the offing.

One evening, my not-yet-then-wife and I were sitting upstairs when I caught a whiff of something burning. “Something happened down in the kitchen,” I thought, expecting the faint odor to disappear rather quickly. Instead, it grew stronger. We headed downstairs to see what was going on.

In the kitchen, on a stool in front of the microwave, sat my dear not-yet-then-mother-in-law, fretting and wringing her hands.

“Oh dear! Oh no!” she was muttering.

Seems she’d wanted to warm up some ginger-snaps for a snack and, not knowing how long it would take, set the egg-timer microwave to something like three minutes.

She didn’t know she could just turn it back to zero to turn it off.

She didn’t know she could just open the door to turn it off.

She didn’t know she could, in a worst-case scenario, unplug the microwave.

So she sat there, watching the ginger-snaps slowly carbonize, worrying herself silly about how much smoke was in the kitchen and promising herself never again to use the microwave.