Napalm and Silly Putty

ICEBOX MAN

Around our house I’m known as Icebox Man. One of my duties is keeping people from standing too long with the icebox door open while they decide what to eat. You know, someone smokes three joints and decides to inventory the refrigerator. Drives me crazy.

“Close the fuckin’ door, will ya? You’re letting out all the cold. Here’s twenty dollars, go down to the Burger King! I’ll save that much on electricity. Close the goddamn door! If you can’t decide what you want, take a Polaroid picture, go figure it out, and come back later. You kids are lucky. We didn’t have Polaroids, we had to make an oil painting.”

I try not to let them get me down, though, because Icebox Man has an even bigger job: picking through the refrigerator periodically, deciding which items to throw away. Most people won’t take that responsibility; they grab what they want and leave the rest. They figure, “Someone is saving that; sooner or later it’ll be eaten.” Meanwhile the thing, whatever it is, is growing smaller and denser and has become

permanently fused to the refrigerator shelf.

Well, folks, Icebox Man is willing to make the tough decisions. And I never act alone; I always include the family.

“I notice some egg salad that’s been here for awhile. Are we engaged in medical research I haven’t been told about?”

“May I assume from the color of this meat loaf that it’s being saved for St. Patrick’s Day?”

“Someone please call the museum and have this onion dip carbon- dated.”

“How about this multihued Jell-O from Christmas? It’s July now. If no one wants this, I’m going to throw it away.”

Did your mother ever pull that stuff on you? Offer you some food that if you didn’t eat it she was “Just going to throw it away”? Well, doesn’t that make you feel dandy?

“Here’s something to eat, Petey. Hurry up, it’s spoiling! Bobby, eat this quickly; the green part is spreading. If you don’t eat it, I’m going to give it to the dog.” It’s so nice to be ahead of the dog in the food chain.

Icebox Man has had some interesting experiences. Have you ever been looking through the refrigerator and come across a completely empty plate? Nothing on it but a couple of food stains? It’s unnerving. I think to myself: “Could something have eaten something else? Maybe the Spam ate the olives. Maybe that half-eaten chicken isn’t really dead. He’s living on our food.” Sometimes I picture a little mouse in a parka, hiding behind the mustard, waiting for the refrigerator light to go off so he can resume his cold-weather foraging.

Probably the worst experience is reaching into the refrigerator and finding something you simply cannot identify at all. You literally do not know what it is. It could be meat; it could be cake. At those times, I try to bluff.

“Honey? Is this good?”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know! I’ve never seen anything like it. It looks like, well, it looks like…meat cake!”

“Smell it!”

“It has no smell whatsoever.”

“That means it’s good! Put it back. Someone is saving it for something.” That’s what frightens me; that someone will consider it a challenge and use it in soup. Simply because it’s there.

It’s a leftover. What a sad word: leftover.

But think about this. Leftovers make you feel good twice. First, when you put them away, you feel thrifty and intelligent: “I’m saving food!” Then, a month later, when blue hair is growing out of the ham, and you throw it away, you feel really intelligent: “I’m saving my life!”