Fridge from the Twilight Zone
by
Christela Cabreros
Don't slam the refrigerator door! That was (and still is) one of my mom's ten million commandments. It makes sense to me now but as a kid, I've thought of it as a magic doorway to another world. I treated the refrigerator the way an 8-year old would treat any household furniture sacred to the housekeeper. Apart from keeping food in there it became an indispensable device for other activities. For example, our huge two-door late-eighties model became fair game to both me and my sister. It didn't only get slammed, it also served as a post for chinese garter, a soccer goal, a substitute to paper, a dart board, a ladder and God knows what else. We weren't the only ones who had this bizarre fridge conduct though. Our uncle hid important visa documents in his refrigerator for fear the thieves would barge right in and rob him. Another uncle has caused disturbance after several people mistook his daily supplement of raw eggs for juice.
I have found strange things in there. Pantyhose, lipstick, retainers, jewelry and dying plants to name a few have somehow found their way inside. Strange as that sounds, I must confess that I've used it as a hiding place myself, knowing no one in their right mind would ever care to look for me there during hide and seek. I would rearrange myself into a human pretzel squeezed inside with the milk bottles on my lap shutting the door tight in front of me as the bulb turned off. Now that wasn't a bad idea because unlike a closet, you couldn't sweat in there. Sad to say, I was soon discovered by my horrified mother singing songs inside while sitting on her funnel cake. Of course, the punishment didn't stop me from doing it again. See, we lived in a tropical island and the refrigerator served as an air conditioner during scorching summer days. I used to steal the chocolates my mother stashed in it and draw on the soft layers of squishy ice believing I was the first person ever to do that. This became an issue for my mother, of course. She got tired of seeing flowers and stick figures on HER fridge. She wasn't too happy about the missing bags of M&M's either.
During high school, I found other uses for the refrigerator that further alarmed my mom and exasperated the rest of the household. Let's just say I conducted experiments in there which were mostly failures. I'm too ashamed about the details but I'll tell you this: the smell of formalin on bread and lasagna is not appetizing to say the least. Even if I've matured a little, I still consider the refrigerator one of the best places to spark creativity. I've been known to visit the fridge five to ten times a night especially when insomnia strikes and I don't have inspiration for words. As expected, I ended up devouring the leftovers from dinner while I was conducting "research" for this assignment. And I admit that while I was crouched in front of the refrigerator I had to stop myself from crawling back in there to relive my childhood all over again. I mean I'm 21 years old and there's no way I could ever justify myself if somebody saw me do something stupid like that. But I did make sure that my mom didn't hear me slam the refrigerator in a moment of childishness.
