© Pierre Maré,
2004 - 2007
Offbeat 16
I live in a household that is three steps up the household evolutionary chain from the bachelor pad. It is home to my wife and daughter who remove it a good few miles from the simplicity of bare necessities. Nor does it contain six-packs and half-full bottles of lethal cocktail ingredients, those other signs of bachelorhood. Waking up with a hangover is now a rare occurrence, even slightly unwelcome.
The first steps in the evolution away from a bachelor household involved the acquisition of vital household appliances, though strangely not acquisition of a significant other. These appliances were not, as you might imagine, a stereo, a large tiger-skin-print couch and a couple of six packs. In fact they were a hot plate, a washing machine and a fridge.
Every bachelor starts out with a hot plate or microwave. What comes next says a lot. A washing machine points to the fact that the bachelor believes that appearances count, or at least that mom has politely requested that her son stop bringing dirty clothes home. A fridge may say that the bachelor prefers fresh food, as opposed to two-day old pizza from a box in the cupboard, but probably says that the bachelor wants to party at home. I chose the fridge.
A fridge is a ‘must-have’ for everyone living outside of the polar regions. It keeps food fresh, and confers immortality on strange bottles of pickles that nobody can bear to throw away. I have a bottle that is six years old now. It still looks OK, though I haven’t plucked up the courage to taste it for the last five years. Perhaps I should hold a dinner party.
Fridges are also indicators of a nation’s prosperity. As soon as wealth begins to sink in, before smog, gridlock and fears about the rising oil price park themselves on the nation’s doorsteps, fridges begin to make their appearance. Forget the number of children in schools, beds in hospitals or per capita GDP: just count the fridges. The truly wealthy nations not only have more than one fridge per household, but will also be recognized as such from the appearance of fridge magnets on said fridges.
Most amazingly however, fridges have a very significant spiritual purpose, long overlooked by major religions. If you want to know the state of a man’s soul, just take a look in his fridge.
For instance, there’s a standard scene in the horror genre, in which the protagonist opens the fridge. The inevitable result is a ghastly apparition: a demon or maggot-infested head with protruding eyes and a lolling tongue. If you see one of these in a fridge, it tells you that the soul of the owner of the fridge is in serious danger, or perhaps that recreational pharmacology is not the best hobby for you.
There’s also the Jeffrey Dahmer / Hannibal Lecter type of fridge that says the owner probably has unresolved sexual issues combined with an oral fixation, and that you accept any offer of a dinner date at your peril.
But these
are extreme cases, and more normal fridges also speak volumes about their
owners.
A ‘healthy fridge’ stocked with fresh salad greens, natural
juices and very few processed foods will tell you that the owner wants
to prolong his health as much as possible. The question is why? Are health
and longevity really the issues or is it a subconscious fear of dying.
A large, expensive, fridge in a wealthy home will be excused smoked salmon and costly cheeses, but if no small luxuries are evident is it a case of miserliness? Why then the expensive fridge? Could it be an image thing and a need for status?
Beers and alcohol speak of hedonism, but could be signs of a need for relaxation and release. And then there is the bottle of pickles that reminds us of a suppressed desire for adventure, the longing for a taste of foreign places and a need to escape.
The old expression, ‘you are what you eat’ does not necessarily hold true any longer, especially given the spread of once quaint local and regional cuisines across the globe. Perhaps, more aptly put, ‘you are what you have in your fridge’.
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