Don't Eat Me

by Tonia

“I would not drink bottles of water at my mom's house because I never knew how long she'd been refilling them from the sink and putting them back in the refrigerator.” – Dan Fogelman

Instead of a boyfriend I have a refrigerator. I have romantic moonlit walks to meet up with it secretly in the middle of the night. We understand one another.

But sometimes relationships have their ups and downs, ya know? Like boyfriends, the ‘frig looks cute and clean from the outside…….but, after awhile, deep within its compartments, it's just bad.

So the day I was fasting for my colonoscopy I decided to clean the fucker (cleaning out the insides of both of us). I would do a little more than just wipe off the front of the shelves. And, for the record, I do try to clean my ‘frig occasionally…..well, maybe 2-3x a year…..OK, maybe less. I don’t know. Let’s not get hung up on the details.

I actually have a theory about what happens to food in refrigerators - it gets sucked into a parallel refrigerator universe, not to be seen again for months…..or, in my case, years. Then it gets dropped out of that alternate universe and left for dead in the very back corner of the lower shelf.....and the middle shelf.....and sometimes the upper shelf. 

So, as I was cleaning and playing What’s That Vegetable, I wondered: when exactly does the edible become the inedible? When it changes colors or when it grows things or when it starts to smell? And at what point does a single woman’s refrigerator start to look like a frat house’s refrigerator? And why hasn’t someone invented disposable refrigerators? I pondered these things as I pulled my arm off some sticky stuff on the ‘frig walls.

In my cleaning, I discovered things from 2003 (threw those away). There were also Tupperware containers I wisely decided not to open because I had no gas mask readily available. I just pitched them, containers and all. I can buy more Tupperware later.

How does one know when it's time to clean the frig? Here are some clues (you're welcome!):

·       -----No light escapes when you open the door at night

·       -----You’d rather be hit by car than open the refrigerator door

·       -----You think you had an Elvis sighting in there

·       -----The vegetable drawer looks like an undiscovered rain forest

·       -----Something pulls the door shut from the inside

And, now that I'm finished cleaning the 'frig, I like to go into the kitchen just to open the door and see the brilliance! Maybe I’ll tackle the oven next……….uh..........well........nah!!

And, for your next girlfriends’ get-together, have a tacky left-over dinner party. Ask girlfriends to bring their left-overs or any food with the word “product” on the label (i.e. “pasteurized prepared cheese product”). Set out foods in aerosol cans (i.e. whipped cream, Cheez Whiz, etc.) and serve some kind of potted meat. Drink heavily!!