Just Unplug Me

A sad fact of life: Things that plug in often break down.

On March 14 of this year we bought a new refrigerator. I hated it then and have hated it every day since, and today it's hating me back. Actually it started hating me back before today but I wasn't paying attention, distracted as I was by living my life. Serving our guests some tepid ice cream the other night, I thought just the freezer was being cranky, but seeking breakfast this morning I suddenly understood that the whole dumb box is broken.

Okay, so it's not a dumb box, it's a so-called "smart" appliance outfitted with a digital strip along the top that usually reports the temperature, only today it says OFF, just in case we humans are too dumb to notice that the inside of the big box is warm and all the eggs, meats and dairy products have spoiled since the damn thing walked off the job two days ago.

At times like these I envy the pilgrims and pioneers and even the cavemen (and cavewomen and cavetransgenders, and of course the caveallies and cavequeers), who depended only on themselves and not the service department at Agren Appliance. For starters, they would probably not have more food on hand than they could eat in a day, so spoilage was not a problem, unless they killed a huge animal, at which point surely they would have put it on ice or buried it deep inside a root cellar or come up with some solution that did not plug in. Either way, they never had to sit around waiting for the appliance repairman, who by the way can't get here until Thursday afternoon between two and five because there are so many other people ahead of me with broken things that plug in needing fixing.

Okay, sure, this is a problem that the homeless do not have. I understand that. I am grateful for having a home, and also for anesthesia and most especially Novocaine, or whatever they use these days, but still, it pisses me off that I just bought half a dozen yogurts and some really nice cheese and now they're all ruined.