Upon The Fridge

Here's a question.  How come "refrigerator" has no "d", but "fridge" does, and it's supposed to be an abbreviation?

Here's a question that isn't rhetorical, because it's a detective question.  How you can tell if a house has children, just by looking at the refrigerator? 

Having magnets on the front that hold up crayon drawings is a good sign but not always guaranteed, because aunts, uncles, and field trip coordinators might have such drawings too.  A+ graded tests and quizzes from school are a definite sign, but that only happens if the kid is old enough, and not a complete dunce.  You could look inside and maybe find individual juice boxes and apple sauces, but sometimes those are also bought by graduate students and other adults who still pack their own lunches.

Instead, try looking on top of the fridge.  If it doesn't have cabinets overhead, and if every square inch on top is overcrowded with cereal boxes, cleaning sprays, and every other appliance imaginable, despite the fact that there are plenty of cabinets and counter space all around, then chances are good there's a toddler in the home.  Why?  Because not only does the top of the refrigerator make a quick and convenient place to stick stuff, but from a child's perspective it's very, very high from the ground.  No, I don't have children.  But I've seen this "safe spot" in action many times.

Being a bachelor, I have no problem keeping a bottle of Formula 409 lying on the floor and coffee tables with sharp corners.  But as has been stated before, any flat horizontal surface can become a magnet for clutter.  It starts with "I'll put this down here, for now" and grows from there.  My refrigerator top is no exception.

Here's what I found:

• 49 Greeting Cards.  When I get cards for my birthday or some other event, I put them on top of the fridge for display.  Then I eventually put them flat down and pile up more cards on top of them.  I knew the number was accumulating for some time, which is why I checked out the top of the fridge in the first place.

• Old subway schedule.  I can get these on-line.
• Phone books.  Hey, you know what?  I can get all of the information here on-line too!  The only time I want to look at these is when I want to look at the local town map, a list of local town restaurants, or look in the front pages to see concert seating charts.  So I'll tear out the map and keep the think local phone book, and toss the other 3 incredibly thick ones.  Yes, they send me more than one phone book every year.
• Dominos coupons.  No apparent expiration date, but I don't care.  When do they ever STOP with the coupons?  They give you 8 new ones every time you order a damn pizza.
• Street map of the Greater Boston area.  In other words, the shady sections.  On one hand, this is the kind of thing that could save my life in some situations.  On the other hand, I already have in my car a laminated map of Boston and the surrounding cities.  No point in keeping this.
• Menus to 3 local restaurants.  These are good to have!  Just not on top of the fridge.  Into the filing cabinet you go, under "menus", where I can find you next time.
• Odd recipes for Crown Royal and Twinkies.  Not both together.  I mean some drink recipes I printed out that use Crown Royal, and some bizarre dessert recipes you can make out of Twinkies.  They had their novelty value.  Time to just ditch them.  They won't be remembered.
• A print out of the following cartoon from Mad magazine.  Just part of my sick humor, I guess:

• George Forman grill.  Which I've never opened because I have no counter space.  I do however have two small but completely unused cabinets behind and over the fridge.  Putting the Grill in there means I can put the blender on top of the fridge, which means I can move one of the boxes on the kitchen table, which means I've finally freed up space on the kitchen table to take the remaining box off the kitchen floor and on to the table!  MY KITCHEN FLOOR IS FINALLY FREE!