Lurking at the Back

There is one in every house. Sometimes, there are two. Some are small, some are large. Some have drawers and some have orifices that spew ice and water.

The refrigerator. You were told it's a place to keep food fresh. They lied. It's a place where food goes to die.

You fill it every week with milk, cheese, salad ingredients and tubs of yogurt. There are jars of pickles and jam. But death lurks.

In the back.

If anything makes it to the back of the fridge, consider it useful as a lethal weapon. I had a jar of pickles (with one pickle floating ominously in the murky liquid) that stayed in the back formonths. Literally, months. It may have been longer, but I refuse to say. When I finally got rid of it, I'd swear it winked at me.

Then there are the mysterious containers; those opaque food-savers you bought thinking they'd be so useful. What evil creature lurks within? Beware. It is possible when you lift off the lid that slimy green hands will reach out and pull it back on. I tend to stay away from containers I can't see into. My logic is if I'm going to conduct scientific experiments, I may as well see what's going on.

Writers have refrigerators unique to them - it may be a desk drawer, or in your document list, or in a file cabinet, but it's that place where you've stashed that project that you'll get to later, or the one you got frustrated with.

At the bottom. You have to bend down (literally or figuratively) to get at it. Food makes you reach back, writing makes you reach down. Significant? Symbolic? Perhaps.

Gather your courage and reach down. Take it out. Open the lid. Yes, it might truly be a disaster - but you just might have invented penicillin.

You'll never know if you don't lift off that lid.