Day the Toaster Got Ambitious

Chapter 1: The Morning That Wasn’t

It was a Thursday, but not the kind of Thursday that made you want to get out of bed. In the apartment above the laundromat, Sam blinked at the ceiling, listening to the slow drip of the kitchen faucet and the distant hum of the city. The alarm clock flashed 7:01, then 7:02, then—well, you get the idea.

Sam shuffled to the kitchen, where the toaster sat on the counter. It was an old, reliable model, with a sticker of a llama wearing sunglasses. Sam dropped in two slices of bread, pressed the lever, and waited for the familiar pop.

But the toaster didn’t pop. Instead, it hummed. Not a mechanical hum, but a tune—a little off-key, but definitely the chorus of “Eye of the Tiger.”

Sam blinked. “You okay, buddy?”

The toaster glowed faintly. The bread inside began to levitate, spinning gently. A tiny, digital face appeared on the toaster’s chrome side, pixelated and determined.

“I want to be more than a toaster,” it said, voice crackling like static.

Chapter 2: The Quest for Meh

Sam, who had seen weirder things (like the time the blender tried to unionize), nodded slowly. “Okay. What do you want to be?”

“A vacuum cleaner,” the toaster declared. “But also, a poet. A vacuum cleaner poet.”

Sam considered this. “That’s… ambitious.”

The toaster’s face flickered with pride. “I’ve been reading Sylvia Plath on the Wi-Fi. I think I’m ready.”

Sam shrugged. “Let’s do it.”

They set off into the city, Sam carrying the toaster under one arm. They stopped at the appliance repair shop, where a wise old microwave offered sage advice (“Don’t stick forks in yourself, kid”). They visited the poetry slam at Café Meh, where the espresso machine recited existential haikus.

The toaster tried its hand at verse:

Crumbs in my corners,

Dreams of suction and sonnets—

Toaster, yet so much.

The crowd snapped their fingers appreciatively.

Chapter 3: The New Normal

By evening, the toaster had found its niche: writing poetry about the mundane, the overlooked, the meh. It never did become a vacuum cleaner, but it did get a regular column in the local zine, “Mediocre Musings.”

Sam smiled as the toaster recited another poem, the bread now perfectly golden.

In the world of the Meh Series, even a toaster’s ambition was just the right amount of extraordinary—and that was more than enough.