The following essay comes from my collection How to Bury a Goat.

This is a work of nonfiction.

While my leftover taco turned round and round I found myself stumbling on a hidden treasure.

The phrase: “Pocket” Sandwich. 

What is a “Pocket” Sandwich? 

There are “Pocket” Sandwich folk, people living among us with a proclivity for storing warm ham-and-cheeses in their pants. In the event that they are struck with a sudden case of the munchies, these folks will be ready. Sure, they might have to pick some lint off of the lettuce or dig around real deep for the lost pickle but they can’t help it— “Pocket” Sandwiches run in their blood. They might know it's weird and off putting, like chewing toenails, they might not, but either way, they live in a paradoxical place. They can’t do without pocket sandwiches (for hunger reasons) and don’t own up to having a pocket sandwich (for fear of being ostracized).

So they “Pocket” Sandwiches in secret, slapping together bread slices with mayo in the dark of night, stuffing their pockets in the chill twilight of early morning, living among us with warm oozing mustard staining the inside of their jeans, dreaming they might meet-cute another “Pocket” Sandwicher at the airport. “You? You too!” they’ll say, whipping out two mushed-up pieces of wet bread for the sharing.

Only then will they realize that the imprint on the other person’s jeans was merely one of those freakishly large phones, or the last living PalmPilot.

Oh the shame of a publicized “Pocket” Sandwich! 

The flight crew gathers round to point and laugh. The stewardesses giggle like turkeys. The captain’s voice a big booming klaxon: “Look at this pocket salami pervert! What a sandwich sicko! What a chicken salad creep!” 

Alas, we know this isn’t what a “Pocket” Sandwich is, at least, not according to the Panasonic corporation. If you, like me, are a card carrying Capital “A” American, a moncher of Pop-Tarts and Tater Tots and Bagel Bites, you will intrinsically know that a “Pocket” Sandwich is only a sandwich kept in one’s pocket if said “sandwich” is a Hot Pocket. You will also know that American copyright law being American copyright law, the Panasonic Corporation likely didn’t feel confident emblazoning their device with the very recognizable brand name Hot Pocket, so instead, they did the next best thing, which still wasn’t great.

The resulting “‘Pocket’ Sandwich” feels a bit like your weird middle school buddy making an “OK” gesture with one hand so that he can drive his index finger through it while winking, air-humping, grunting, nodding, and mumbling “nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more!” We all know this boy or have known this boy, the one who is hopelessly sheltered, the one whose brain has just recently grown to contain the vaguest conception of insinuation, to comprehend the vaguest forms of text and subtext. He will lather you with vague insinuations with or without your consent or encouragement because A) you are standing there and B) he has not yet grown to understand the insinuated annoyance, boredom and frustration communicated by silence. 

In other words, Panasonic may not be saying “Hot Pocket,” but we all know what they are insinuating. And we have known for some time.

A Not Brief Enough Analysis of Corporate Marketing

Gone are the days when kings and emperors owned everything and boldly barked art lackeys into chiseling out statues that said as much. Nowadays, our rulers settle for owning everything and meekly commissioning a college to build a structure with their name on it, but they don’t do this boldly, and never with the same grandiosity as their predecessors. No one calls a student center “The Center of Our Majestic and Venerable Patriarch Elonius Musk” or “Our Good Lord Gates Computer Laboratory Established Anno Domini 2024.”

No, these days its “The Elon Musk Student Center” or “The Gates Foundation.” These days they put emphasis on “Foundation” and “Center” rather than Musk and Gates because their gifts are democratic, they serve the people, they philanthropize for our sake, not theirs, so the story goes. And we must believe it, for why else would they give gobs of (tax deductible) cash to colleges and hospitals?

The one exception to this rule of false humility is the glorious world of corporate branding. When they aren’t Taco-Belling it real hard (hey bud! Wanna be buds and buy a taco? Like, so meta! hahahahaha! Here’s a picture of Drake scarfing a giant cinnabon) corporations still generally cling to the objective, deistic tone. The bold voice that goes where many have boldly gone before but pronounces its presence so boldly that few think to challenge what is seen and heard. Think narrators in car commercials. Think 4/5 doctors. In this objective, objectively self-centered (ON brand) monologue, corporations bark the new art lackeys into scurrying off to type out numbers, fragmented descriptions, instructions, brand names, and euphemisms like “Pocket” Sandwich all thoroughly proofread, aligned, designed, and laser printed onto the side of products:

“I AM PANASONIC,” they seem to say, “CORPORATION OF CORPORATIONS, LOOK UPON MY “POCKET” SANDWICH YE CHEF AND COOK FOR 2 MIN, 30 SEC.”

The Panasonic microwave in question had cook times for a dozen or so food products. I’ve noticed this trend on lots of microwaves. I’ve never seen it on stoves. I’ve never seen it on toasters. I’ve never seen it on grills. Something about the practicality of having the cook times printed on the oven is both convenient and insulting, as though they picture me standing before the microwave in my boxers, a frozen dinner in one hand, my other free to pick my nose or scratch my ass. In their version I am likely squinting at the clock, the buttons, and my “Pocket” Sandwich in utter befuddlement. I don’t know how they got video footage of me and I’m frankly annoyed.

I’m proud to say I’ve used these instructions only once—to cook a potato. I’d describe the results as middling: lukewarm, with a frozen center.

Please don’t ask why I freeze my potatoes.

A Not Brief Enough History of the Microwave Oven

Disregarding the “Pocket” Sandwich for a moment  (AND ONLY A MOMENT) let us ruminate on the microwave itself. Let us examine it from every angle (all twenty four of them + the angles metaphorical, historic, symbolic… ) let us look upon it as one might examine a frozen dinner on a turntable. Dully. With vague interest. With our minds absently considering the clock. 

Much interesting intellectual commentary has likely been given about the importance of the microwave oven.

I wouldn’t know.

I haven’t read it.

Using my expert research skills, honed for six years via a higher ed lit degree, I decided to employ the time honored tactic of googling the phrase “famous essays about microwaves.” The AI search results made me feel so sad and bored that I checked out of the whole endeavor.1

There may be profound, time honored writing out there about microwave ovens. If so, I don’t care to find it. I’m going to proceed as though it exists, and as such, I will boldly and without evidence claim that microwaves are perhaps not overlooked but looked at overmuch. Originally invented in Arthur Miller’s 1940’s they’ve became emblematic of the modern, soulless consumerism that so thoroughly frustrated David Foster Wallace.2

The one vaguely interesting thing I did figure out is that microwaves were originally called “Radaranges” and though the etymology of this name is more closely connected to “radar” than “radiation” because of the British radar technology that enabled the development of early microwaves, it’s notable and weird and time capsuley that the Raytheon company chose to veer into the whole “nuclear” side of the “radiation”… erm… “radar” box aesthetic. “Radarange” is such a gnarly, radioactive name that one can’t help but be charmed a bit, as though the name itself clomps on shiny metal pre-Hiroshima robot feet out of the zeitgeist that gave us The Jetsons, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and Lost in Space. “Radarange” lived in a world where national, global, and perhaps even cosmic problems were solvable provided one anted up enough elbow grease, American pluck, and good old decent disposable income for the right consumer product. 

The original Radarange was an industrial behemoth: weighing over 750 pounds and costing around $50,000 in today’s money. The family microwave we now know wouldn’t beep incessantly onto most kitchen counters until the 70’s and 80’s and it wouldn’t ever make it’s way onto my childhood kitchen counter in the 90’s / 00’s for reasons that are pretty zany.

Nuclear Family

On the topic of microwaves and radiation and zaniness, my sister conducted a science experiment in middle school where she watered different plants with different “types” of water (filtered, tap, microwaved— you know, all the types). Her hypothesis was that microwaved water was dangerous. That it would actually kill plants. 

She did not come to this opinion in a vacuum (would that it twer so simple). Apparently, the idea that microwaves are dangerous has made it’s way around crunchy-granola-Goop circles for as long as such circles have existed, which is weirdly much longer than granola as an aesthetic adjective, “crunchy,” and Goop. The argument probably involves lots of tendrils and strands in the same way that arguments about vaccines and autism are wont to do, but it boils down to “microwaves cause cancer.” Gweyeth Paltrow goes as far as to say “get rid of your microwave. Like, just smash it.” Whether she feels this way for nutritional or aesthetic or cancer reasons is a bit of a mystery. Once again, I do not care to investigate further. Suffice to say, it’s weird, I kinda get the original radioactive association (thanks Raytheon) and I think I speak for all of us when I say I want a Goop brand T-shirt that depicts a cartoonishly deranged, rictus-smiling Paltrow smashing a microwave with a mallet beside a swirly font that says “Just smash it.”

My sister absorbed the “microwaves cause cancer” idea from my mother who was at the time suffering through lymphoma. I can’t remember what grade or degree or accolade or award the cancer was given, or how they rank cancers, but it wasn’t a good cancer. In fact I think it was a very bad one. Projections were not optimistic. Mom’s strategy (much derided by her sons and husband at the time) was quite sound: any port in a storm. She opted for chemotherapy, but also decided to eat a fully organic vegan diet, drink lots of juiced vegetables and broth and flax oil, exercise daily, drink six 16 oz glasses of water each morning, participate in a ceremony at our Church where her head was anointed with oil, get on every prayer list, and, of course, avoid microwaves for the associations they have with radiation. 

At the time, I thought mom was bonkers. The food we ate tasted pretty much like bran and raw broccoli because mostly we ate bran and raw broccoli. My middle-school-boy self felt that I would waste away and die from lack of nutrients. I remember watching interviews with skeletal POW’s on the History Channel just to listen to someone who understood what I was going through. John McCain got me. He really did. These were “The Starving Years.”

At the houses of my friends I ate so voraciously that their mom’s likely considered calling CPS or someone else in the government dedicated to studying bottomless pits. One time, I was eating a steak dinner with a potato and a cockroach fell off the ceiling and into my food. My friend’s mom was mortified and apologetic, but I didn’t hear her apologies. I was too busy trying to eat around the roach. When she tried to take the plate away I just about bit her hand. 

Lest you think I was only over-dramatic, dad might have taken things a bit too far once or twice. I complained about mom’s cooking a lot and dad got so sick of the insult he perceived towards my mother that he instituted a rule: whiners don’t get dinners. For a time, this was swell. I’d bitch and skip out on some of the less savory options (I’m looking at you cauliflower-carrot-radish salad and flax oil carrot juice). But then dad got wise. He changed the rules of the game. If I complained I wouldn’t eat for twenty-four hours. To my memory, this only happened once and dad cracked a few hours shy of the total.  

I look back on this time with the echoes of a vaguely felt fatigue and exhaustion. Mom survived, so mostly it’s funny, but it wasn’t funny then. Everyone was beleaguered. Dad was handling most things best he knew how. Mom was wasting away. The chemotherapy turned her body into something actually similar to a POW. She even recorded a video during the worst of it talking about her life and her dreams and her hopes. She never said so, but I knew that it was because she thought she might not make it, that when we were older we might like to know more about the woman who made us eat all these raw vegetables.

In such a climate as this, if mom wanted the microwave packed away, dad was damn sure going to pack the microwave away, pulling it out only for the odd science experiment, and even then only if we used it outside, armed with oven mitts. 

The weird thing is that my sister’s experiment worked…  Wouldn’t you know it, the plant she fed microwaved water shriveled up like a prune. My kid-self saw this and (after wondering what dried sunflowers tasted like) shriveled in fear.

I’ve carried a mild aversion to microwaves through the rest of my life. It isn’t really distinct, more just another block in the tottering Jenga tower of my health anxieties. I’ve lived with the assumption that, on some level (likely the atomic one) microwaves are giving me tiny bits of baby cancer. “These baby bits” (my personified hypochondriac likes to say) “may not directly kill you, but neither will microplastics, or cigarettes, or alcohol, or the fast food you eat each weekend, or the days where you choose to be sedentary.” Alongside this depressing part of my brain is another part we might call Mr. Superman For A Day. He’s the part that says “Eating greens and grains? Working out at 5:30 AM?! Writing an entire essay in a DAY!?! Way to go Georgie boy! Good on ya! Now you just need to do what you did today Every Single Day Of Your Life with Zero Exceptions for illness, vacations, obligations, death etc, oh, and cut out microwaves.” Turns out what doesn’t kill you can still be a source of foundational shame.

For the other hypochondriacs reading this, I feel the need to share some comforting truths. Microwaves don’t cause cancer. They never have. I’ve assumed for some time that microwaves are safe, but I never understood how they work; I’ve simply been following the American herd as we graze our way across the freezer aisle. I still don’t know how microwaves work, but in researching for this essay I found that there is literally no evidence microwaved food entails health risks beyond the normal risks involved in eating food: choking, food poisoning, prolonging that most dangerous state of existence—life. In fact, microwaving food can be a more nutritious option than boiling3 and less hazardous than grilling4. It should also go without saying that these health benefits likely only apply if you use your microwave for things besides nuking “Pocket” Sandwiches. It should also go without saying that if you are deeply concerned about the three vitamins you lost to boiling water this evening, then maybe it’s time to take a step back from “health (TM).”

After all the research, I’m left with one large unsolvable mystery:

Why did my sister’s microwave-water-plant die?

Maybe boiling water by any method removes healthy bacteria and nutrients that plants like to sip? Maybe this was a textbook example of shoddy experimentation, the reality that if you are looking for something ineffable you will inevitably find evidence for its existence, the same principle behind dousing rods and horoscopes and a large portion of unreplicable research?

Or maybe pouring scalding water directly onto a plant has similar adverse health effects to pouring scalding water directly onto a human? 

The Pocket Sandwich of Gratitude

When my dad wasn’t white-knuckling me for 24 hours he gave me ample evidence of his deep and abiding love for… sandwiches. 

Hearing him recount the times he worked with his grandfather moving crates of watermelons (or was it oranges?) on and off a flatbed truck (or was it a tractor trailer?), one would think all they did was eat egg sandwiches. Recounting the story for the dozenth time, he’d lean back (just as I assume he did in that tractor trailer/flatbed) and whisk me away to a world where a boy and a man, dog tired, scarfed crunchy toast and eggs together: “Granny would slap together six of em,” he’d say, “three for each of us, two in the morning and one wrapped in wax paper for lunch. The bread was crispy and covered with mayo, the eggs a mountain capped in a layer of cheese.”

I could practically taste how delicious those sandwiches would be, basked in their own reflected heat, congealed into a salty collage of texture. I imagine that foregoing this kind of dietary “goop” (the egg sandwich mayo kind) is the sort of loss that keeps Gweneyth Paltrow up at night, whimpering tears of money into her cruise line handkerchief. 

I’ll never know if the bread Granny used was Wonder, or Sunbeam, or Sara Lee. The truth is, just like Panasonic and Radarange and General Electric, the distinction is a meaningless aesthetic wallpaper designed to give the illusion of choice.

Corporations and their products are existentially meaningless. We fetishize their branding,5 have fetishized it long before Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben and Mad Men and Mad Magazine and Roy Rogers taught us to do so. “The facts” are that our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents produced goods with their labor and consumed goods to survive and (sometimes) to relax and pass the time. Whether these goods were owned by Gwenyth Paltrow or Thomas L. Phillips matters only insofar as we know who to blame for the theft of our grandparents’ creativity and hard work.

Even so, I think there is a certain kind of Taoism in being thankful for the boring things, the ubiquitous things, the corporately exploited things, the extracted things, the “Pocket” Sandwiches. I don’t need to praise Panasonic in particular to be thankful that the universe gave me a way to heat my food in sixty seconds.

Such a practice of absolute gratitude is restorative, holistic, borderline spiritual. It lets me practice the essential skills I need to see my life as meaningful, rich, and textured. If I can be thankful for an imperfectly made microwave I’m more likely to be thankful for my imperfectly made father. 

And being thankful for a microwave is easy.

Don’t believe me? Think about it: some genius at the top of his game hooked a birds nest of wire together to fry potatoes atomically. When you bleep in the cook time you’re telling the microwave how long you want the molecules to dance. Inside its inner fire, the “Pocket” Sandwich hosts atoms that huddle in the heat and swap currents, like stories, about the gods who made the sun. 

Just as the microwave is crammed with Chestertonian significance, so too are my memories of my (still living) father. During “The Starving Years” of “no dinners for whiners,” around the time I’d started to swallow my finger nails, my dad noticed me on the couch thinking about food and asked “What’s wrong with you?” The conversation went something like this:

“All I can think about is sandwiches.”  (Chew, chew, bite, bite, fingernail swallow)

“Why don’t you make a sandwich?”

“Because all mom buys is three-seed-bread6 and vegenaise.7”

“Naaaah, you’re making em wrong.”

“OK?” (Chew chew bite bite) “Prove it?” 

Because it beat subsisting on fingernails, I followed him into the kitchen and sat down at the counter. 

Slowly, deliberately, he crafted The Perfect Sandwich, or at least The Best Sandwich Someone Could Make Given the State of our Shameful Pantry. Vegenaise sure, but not so much that the rotten cauliflower stink overtook the bread. Just enough turkey. Plenty of salt and pepper. The last of the good mustard. When he was done he took out a knife and did the unthinkable.

He cut off the crusts. 

He’d always taught me that kids who demanded the crusts be cut from their sandwiches were weak and spoiled and anemic and tyrannical, like Emperor Nero in Converse. He told me they probably drank juice from a bottle and wore Depends in church on Sunday, and most importantly, that they wouldn’t go anywhere in life.

But in this moment, my dad didn’t care about any of that. And by not caring about it, he gave me permission not to care about it.

When he was finished with the only cutting more symbolically significant than the kind administered by a mohel, my dad took half the sandwich and I took the other half and we both ate our halves in silence beneath the one light bulb in the kitchen— our little oasis. Neither of us needed to say a word. We knew what we knew.

We were both hungry. We were in it together.

If memories could fit into pockets, if they didn’t wisp around like microwaves in a microwave, I’d carry the memory of that sandwich in my pocket every day, take it out to nibble in moments of sadness. It would be my “Pocket” Sandwich.

And…

Would this memory of my father be diminished just a smidge by the recent revelation that during “The Starving Years” when dad got hungry he’d secretly swing by the little league ball park on his way home from work and walk up to the refreshments box sans-child like a total creep and buy a entire bag of cheeseburgers for himself and when asked who it was for say “for my family at home” and then instead of doing that thing and taking said gooey delicious cheeseburgers home he’d scarf down the whole bag of hot gooey cheeseburgers hunched in his car like some kind of sick suburban Gollum so that we wouldn’t know he was cheating the diet and he could avoid disappointing his ailing POW camp wife, likely wiping the cheese from his stubbly chin just before entering his house full of starving boys hunched over tomato husk soup or raw eggplant or some other god awful non-cheeseburger thing that while technically caloric could not even generously be referred to as food?

Does this revelation diminish the earlier “Pocket” Sandwich memory of warmth and light?

Sure. 

A bit. 

A lot actually. 

A whole lot.

Almost entirely.

Almost.

… But not so much that I can’t be thankful. 

Even the sun goes behind a cloud every now and then.

I’ll keep the sandwich in my pocket for a rainy day.