Our house was built in 1957. It’s not what you’d call a classic. Still, it came with some pretty cool features, including what I call a Mr. Ed door (and what the rest of the Grand Rapids calls a Dutch door. Go figure.). Another part of the package was the nifty-cool garbage disposal. I’d never seen anything like it. To turn that puppy on, you had to put the cover in place. A magnet activated the grinding action. No switches. No fear of hand amputation. Safe for children, pets and fearful adults like me.

Then came the remodel. We redid the entire kitchen last year. It was gutted. I told the contractor that I wanted to keep the disposal. There was some eye-rolling. They just didn’t get my attachment to that ancient, but ultimately safe, contraption. Then, just one week before the redo commenced…it died.

So. Now I have this new-fangled disposal with a handy switch mounted on the wall. And I live in fear of it every day. What happens, per se, if there’s something clogging the works and you put your hand down there to check things out and accidentally hit the switch. It would never happen, you say? Well. I’m not so sure. I have to screw up my courage every time I turn the thing on. Especially after the cherry pitter incident, in which said cherry pitter slid down while I had the disposal on. Little plastic bits from the disposal entry went flying. And I had the jitters for the rest of the day