When Sir Monkeypants and I got married, lo these 10 years gone, all he wanted was a sandwich maker — one of those grill-type kitchen appliances that you press down on a sandwich and it toasts both sides while making whimsical little triangle pockets of melty goodness. We registered for one, but also, we told lots of people who asked us what we wanted that we wanted one of those, because we thought we were pretty hilarious, and we actually really wanted one, and we felt really weird about asking for gifts and the sandwich maker was an economical little gadget that didn’t seem too hoidy-toidy for the asking.

But of course, that meant that lots of people listened to us. And in the end, we wound up with, I think, six sandwich makers (many thanks to FameThowa, who was the only one to update the registry with her sandwich maker purchase). We exchanged them all but kept one, and we loved it, and used it many times in the first few years we were married. But then we got tired of sandwiches (known in our household as “magic sandwiches”) and it fell out of favour, wasting away in the back of the cupboard with the big coffee maker and the bread machine. It became such a pain to get it out — you had to take out several other appliances and dig it out of the bottom shelf — that whenever we wanted a grilled cheese and tomato, we just used a frying pan.

When we moved last year, we went through a big purge. Sir Monkeypants convinced me to ditch the sandwich maker. I was skeptical — he really, really loves the magic sandwiches — but I agreed.

So this past weekend we were down visiting his folks, and his mom sent us home with some of her famous Samosa Shaq, a spicy potato mixture that is meant to go inside magic sandwiches. And as soon as we got home, Sir Monkeypants went to the cupboard to pull out the sandwich maker, and I reminded him what happened to it, and you could see his poor heart shattering into a million pieces before your eyes. He used a frying pan but I swear I heard sniffing and a lot of cursing under his breath about how it just wasn’t the same.

Today at the mall I had to go to three different stores but I finally found a sandwich maker — their rarity is a little alarming for the magic sandwich lovers among us. But now, we are a sandwich maker owning household again. I think I can guess what Sir Monkeypants is having for dinner.