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You can learn a lot about a person if you look at their fridge. For some reason, highly personal information (bills, grades, termination letters, love notes) is on display for all your guests. Sure, the hope of a piece of lasagna waiting at the back of Shelf Two can be pretty distracting, but c’mon, people notice this stuff.
Come to think of it, the entire kitchen is an anomaly. And, if the kitchen is the heart of the home, the fridge is its Aorta artery. In every typical American household, you’ll find people congregating within arms reach of a refrigerator. It amazes me that you can have a beautiful living room, fully decorated with nap-friendly couches, lazy-legged ottomans, 57-inch plasma TV’s and a bowl of peanuts/M&M’s, but people want to huddle over the kitchen island to talk. Obesity in America? I just can’t figure it out.
What’s the first thing you do when you walk into your house? Check the fridge. You might not even be hungry, but you check the fridge and your eyes can convince your stomach that, yes, you really could use another piece of apple pie.
Along the way, someone discovered how much attention the fridge was getting in the home and realized its market value. The door of the fridge has become prime real estate for displaying bills, nieces’ senior pictures and the latest science class accomplishment. But, it’s such a paradox. You have bills that constantly taunt you, pictures that remind you to call, and calendars to keep your birthdays in order. All while you’re trying to prepare dinner.
Within the showcasing of pictures, the fridge offers different areas that warrant more attention. For instance, if your “mug” makes the fridge at a relative’s house, or your family (adorned in matching red turtle necks at Christmas time) makes the fridge at a friend’s house, you know you have arrived. Babies are automatic, with a typical 6-month gestation grace period and graduation pictures are a given.
Aside from these for-sures, you have to be doing something right if you make the fridge, especially the corner office spot of the frozen food box-near the handle. See, the lure of a potential piece of lasagna or one more Blue Moon waiting for your guest at the back of Shelf Two can be distracting, but people will notice your smiling face next to the handle. “Who’s this handsome devil?!,” inquires your Mom’s coworker.
So, check this. I don’t have any more A+ papers or track n’ field ribbons for my Mom to display, but when I went home to visit my family in Cincinnati recently I realized I’d been bumped from the fridge entirely. Somehow my newlywed wife and myself had been moved to the freezer door, third quadron down, and some random neighbor’s daughter was posted right at the main door handle, smiling and taunting, “Do you really need to have another piece of cake?”
I understand people rearrange their pictures depending on who’s coming over that particular afternoon, but give me a break. My wife and I deserve a better spot than that, and this girl can go in the dining room for two days, tops, then off to meet Mr. Rumpke.
Which reminds me, I have a few friends from college coming over, so I have some things to shuffle around on the freezer side.
What’s on your fridge right now?
