For the past year or so, our stove will on occasion begin beeping and flashing F1 E2 on its digital display. The first time this happened, we randomly pressed buttons on the touchpad until it finally stopped. Since then, we've figured out that pressing the Clock button is what works to stop the beeping/flashing and so now whenever the stove has a freak out we just press Clock and it stops.

We have no idea what F1 E2 is trying to tell us. While the people from whom we bought the house were more than happy to leave behind the motherfucking vine and the fish, they did not leave us manuals to anything. I suppose we could google the error codes, but frankly we haven't been concerned about it because the stove works fine and it's easy to stop the beeping - just press the Clock button.

One evening soon after The Button was introduced on Lost, Rob and I were eating dinner when, suddenly, BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP. I hopped up from my seat, hurried over to the stove where F1 E2 F1 E2 F1 E2 F1 E2 was flashing, and pressed the Clock button. And then I looked at Rob and said, "Oh my god, this is just like Lost."

"Ha, you're right! We have no idea why we're pressing the button, but we do it every time, faithfully."

"Yeah, we don't question it or consider doing anything to change it. We just keep pressing the button! We are mice in an experiment, trained to respond to a stimulus by pressing a button."

"How embarrassing."

"Seriously. I mean, we've been rolling our eyes at the Lost characters all season for doing pretty much the same thing."

We were at a party a few weeks later when suddenly the host's stove started beeping and flashing F1 E2 F1 E2 F1 E2. From across the room he yelled, "Hey, would somebody push the button? On the stove? Just hit Clock." It seems we're not the only slaves to the button.

This morning the stove started beeping at 4am. Rob crawled out of bed, mumbling "I've got it" as he stumbled to the kitchen to press the button. Fifteen minutes later it was beeping again. Rob sighed as he got up and headed to the kitchen again. He came back muttering, "I cannot believe we are still pressing the damn button."

"We should train the cats to push it," I replied.

We were just falling back to sleep when it went off AGAIN. "My turn," I said. I went into the kitchen and pushed Clock. The beeping stopped, but I wasn't convinced that would hold it for long since Rob's button-pushing had now failed twice to hush the stove for more than 15 minutes. So after pressing Clock I pressed the Timer button. And then Clock again, for good measure. And the stove was silent the rest of the night.

But today I'm regretting having added to the button-pushing sequence. Because the thing is, the next time the stove beeps, I'm going to push Clock Timer Clock with the hope that this magic combination will appease the stove for a longer duration of time than if I just pushed Clock. Probably (surely) it doesn't actually make any difference and probably (surely) it was just a coincidence. But just to be safe, I'll do the new sequence. I know I will. And then what? Then, the first time that doesn't do the trick for a satisfactory amount of time, I'll convince myself that an even more complex combination of button presses will work. And it will. And this sort of coincidental occurrence will happen enough times that soon I'll be pushing Clock Timer Clock Clock Timer Timer Timer Clock (pause) Timer Clock Clock.

Or maybe I'll just skip all that nonsense and enter the numbers 4 8 15 16 23 42 into the timer before pushing the Clock button. I've got a hunch that'll quell the beeping and flashing for a good 108 minutes.