Burnt Toast

Have you heard the burnt toast theory?

It’s a simple idea, really. If you burn your toast in the morning, it’s annoying. It delays you. You have to decide whether to try again or just suck it up and eat around the blackened bits. But in the grand cosmic dance of time and cause and effect, that minor delay might be the very thing that saves you later. Maybe that delay means you miss the red light where someone else gets T-boned. Maybe being late to work puts you in the right place at the right time — free coffee, a kind word, a job opportunity. In short, burning your toast might feel like the day going wrong, but it could actually be the day being saved.

Here’s my burnt toast moment.

My day ended at 9:45 p.m. — or somewhere close. Not with peace or contentment, but with the kind of restless sleep that comes from lying awake too long under the weight of worry. You know the kind: body tired, mind buzzing. Money is tight right now. I mean, really tight. It feels like each week I’m stretching a rubber band thinner and thinner, hoping it doesn’t snap.

I lie there in bed, not fantasizing about wild get-rich-quick schemes (no, I’m not thinking about robbing a bank or launching an OnlyFans), but just trying to make the math work. What did I spend this month that I didn’t absolutely need to? Could I make more somehow? Should I have taken a different path in life? That last one haunts me most: Would my life be easier if I had chosen security over happiness in my marriage? These are the kinds of thoughts that don’t lead to answers — just exhaustion.

Around 10:00, just as my brain was finally slowing down, I heard the unmistakable shuffle of tiny feet. My youngest came downstairs, looking pale, uncomfortable, and saying his stomach hurt. My mother senses kicked in immediately, but I hoped it was just one of those bedtime stall tactics.

It wasn’t.

Minutes later, the poor kid threw up — on himself, his bed, the rug. Everything. And suddenly, the night was reset. Clean up the child. Clean up the bedding. Mop the floor. New pajamas. Fresh blankets. A puke bowl and a cup with ice water and a straw, just in case. He came back downstairs four more times, groggy but slowly improving. By the last visit, he was back to chatting like himself. Still, we kept him home the next day — just to be safe.

So there I was, still in sweats, plowing through the mountain of laundry this stomach bug had gifted me. The washing machine hummed in the background as I tried to put the house back in order. I hadn’t planned to stay home, but there I was, grounded by a virus.

That’s when the truck pulled up.

A white utility truck with a bold logo slapped on the side, and a man—middle-aged, portly, bundled in layers—got out. I watched from the window, confused, then horrified, as he began to unscrew the cap connecting our house to the water line.

My water was getting shut off.

This was really happening. The angry red letters on those final notices hadn’t been bluffing. Panic surged through me as I grabbed my laptop and bolted out the front door, barefoot in the snow.

“I’m paying now!” I yelled, slipping across the icy porch. “Here, look — I can show you!”

The man, to his credit, didn’t roll his eyes or brush me off. He paused. “Thank you,” he said, almost relieved. “I hate doing this part of the job.”

The truth? I hadn’t intended to pay the bill yet. I’d been waiting for my tax refund to hit. It wasn’t that I didn’t have the money; it’s just that I was trying to stretch it. Prioritize. Juggle. Rob Peter to pay Paul, as they say. But here I was — home, unexpectedly, with just enough time to prevent something that could’ve made things exponentially harder.

And that, my friends, is what I mean by a burnt toast moment.

If my son hadn’t been sick, I wouldn’t have stayed home. If I hadn’t stayed home, I wouldn’t have been there to stop the shutoff. If I hadn’t stopped the shutoff, who knows how long we would’ve gone without water?

The thing is — these days are hard. Not just financially, though God knows it feels like everything costs more than it should. But emotionally. Mentally. We’re all running low on something — patience, sleep, peace, clarity. The smallest things feel massive. An unreturned text can derail a day. A rude look from a stranger can ruin your mood. Even brushing your teeth can feel like a victory some mornings.

Sometimes, just showing up for the basics is all you can manage. And so, yes — I had postponed that bill out of survival-mode defiance. My version of rebellion: "I'll pay it later." Not because I was lazy. Not because I didn’t care. But because sometimes, when everything feels like it’s on fire, you pretend the one small corner of the house that isn’t burning can wait.

Turns out, it couldn’t wait. But, somehow, I was there in time.

A few hours later, I checked the faucet. Water still ran. My hasty payment had gone through. Crisis, for now, averted.

And in the final poetic twist of the day, when I went to make myself a grilled cheese sandwich — because after a night like that, you deserve comfort food — I burned the damn toast.

This time, I didn’t throw it out or start over.

I just ate it.

Because maybe I’d already had my big mishap for the day. Maybe the worst had already come and gone. Maybe the burnt toast, this time, was just toast. No warning. No delay. Just lunch.

But still, I couldn’t help but smile.

Because the burnt toast theory doesn’t promise that things will be easy — it just reminds us that sometimes, what feels like the start of a disaster is really just a detour away from something worse. Sometimes it’s not bad luck. It’s just rerouting.

And sometimes, you need to lose a little sleep, clean up a little vomit, sprint barefoot into the snow, and burn your sandwich—just to be reminded you’re still standing. Still fighting. Still here.

And that, truly, is enough.