In my writing workshop, we did a short impromptu writing exercise where we had to write the beginning of a story that starts with "Once upon a time..."

Once upon a time, a man and his toaster had a dispute.

The man was groggy from a late night of spying on his neighbors across the alley who were of dubious nationality (someplace where the men were swarthy with perpetual forehead sweat and the women their coy properties). He was convinced they were running some kind of third-rate brothel out of their dumpy 1 BD + den. He had already been irritated with the coffeemaker which had released a thick little poot of grounds in its final gurgle of release, thus ruining the entire pot. Now the toaster refused to relinquish his toast.

I'll shake you, he said, waving a knife at the toaster. The indifferent toaster didn't even blink, knowing if the man so much as tried to pry that precious meal from his insides, he would give him a shock to remember.

I'll throw you in the alley like the tea kettle!

The toaster remembered the tea kettle, the shy, red KitchenAid possessing an unassuming allure. He had grown fond of her in the summer months when she sat quietly on the backburner, watching the rest of the kitchen go about its business while she, herself, remained a wallflower.

The man was always a coffee drinker but the one time he attempted to make tea for an obese, inane lady friend with a double chin and a peculiar smell, the teapot's shrill announcement of the water boiling inside her so discombobulated the man that he burned his pinkie on her red backside and promptly defenestrated her out the window.

The entire kitchen was horrified.

They had staged a passive-aggressive rebellion ever since.