Hotter than Havana

What’s on my mind? Our freighter of a fridge has died. Died!

DOT-DOT-DOT-DIT-DIT-DIT-DOT-DOT-DOT … 

SOS! SOS! SOS!

Died! With dinner guests about to descend. And no hope of resuscitation. When Himself tried to give it mouth-to-mouth, he nearly choked on melting ice cubes. Our fridge is hotter than Havana.

SOS! SOS! SOS!

We’ve got a tugboat-sized fridge beside our (puny 12 cu. ft.) deep freeze, but that smaller fridge is full. We also have a plug-in cooler the size of a bar fridge, but it’s crammed with the salad dressings, sauerkraut, and those other things that we’ve jammed in and piled - topsy-turvy - atop the stuff that was in our broken main fridge. 

Our freighter-of-a-fridge is adrift in a pool of water on the kitchen floor. We’ve been told the freighter’s “old.” Obsolete, even. How old? Oh, maybe 10 years. Around that vintage, anyway. Even its parts manual is no longer online. Hmmm …. 

Its replacement, some fancy cruise ship model, costs so many thousands of dollars I can’t even count that high. 

We recently walked through a department store and saw a $10,000 fridge. It was wider than ours, but otherwise looked the same. But hey! It was on sale! I know you won’t believe this, but as God (and Himself) is my witness, it was $10 off. Ten dollars! Whoopie!

When we bought the tugboat-sized fridge four years ago, the clerk sniffed: “You don’t want that! It has wire racks!” It also had an $800 price tag, which nicely met our budget for a second fridge. 

She suggested that what we really wanted was a glass-shelved fridge of several thousand dollars. I suggested what she really wanted was a big fat commission. Besides, a glass-shelved fridge can look grungy - especially when its owner (who, with better ways to spend her time) never cleans it.

Two things: It occurs to me that many of us in the western world have too much of everything - whether food, clothing, rooms in our houses, cars, boats, and more. Too, too much. It’s shameful. 

It also occurs to me that I’m never going to be able to find a basic fridge with the same stainless steel doors the freighter had, but without an ice maker, water dispenser, dancing blue lights or any of the other fripperies that kick up the cost. I just want a fridge the size of my (RIP) freighter, to fit the existing space. With wire racks, of course.

Now that would float my boat.

©  Nicole Parton, 2019