Am I the only one who feels that the sink-mounted electric garbage disposal is one of the greatest inventions in the History of Western Civilization? Sometimes I think so. We have one in our apartment. I named it Maurice. Even my wife will now hand me something disgusting from the recesses of our refrigerator and tell me to "Feed it to Maurice."

Maurice.

Simply put, garbage stinks, and nothing stinks more than food-based garbage. At least, not until you have children, but I'm not going there. Throw some Chinese food remnants in your garbage pail, and you'd better haul it to the dumpster (or at least a pail in the garage) within a day. Otherwise you can expect a substantial fine from your local health authorities. Maurice takes care of that. Day-old Kung Pao, coffee grinds, eggshells, banana peels, onion peelings, stale bread, leftover dinners that are well past their prime, vegetables that you really detest but your wife serves to you anyway for some sadistic reason... Voosh! Maurice efficiently reduces them all to mere particles and erases them from existence. I like that.

Maurice shows very little discrimination in his tastes (of course he's a 'he'; can you really imagine a garbage disposal being a 'she'?). We've got a number of spoons and forks with various nicks and scratches. And Maurice has taken his lumps too; I found out that he's not overly fond of corncobs or peach pits.

I'll be bidding adieu to Maurice when I move out of our apartment next month, and I'll have to forge a relationship with our new sink-mounted disposal (as yet unnamed). I just wanted to take advantage of this forum to give our seldom-regarded kitchen friends the recognition they deserve.

Thank you.