Refrigerator Door

No sooner do I open the refrigerator door to partake of a cool drink, outwit a tray of ice cubes, or grab a turkey leg, than my wife calls, from whatever part of the house she may be in, “The refrigerator door is open!”

This can hardly be intended as a news item, so I realize that it must be implied criticism. Even so, it is the only way I know to get at the foodstuffs or beverages inside, unless I burrow up through the motor or remove the rear panel with a small charge of nitroglycerin — neither of which would be, in my opinion, preferable to opening the door, although these methods would happily do away with my wife’s announcement, “The refrigerator door is open!”

This statement, if not acted upon within five seconds, is followed up by the even firmer one, “You are letting all the cold air out.” I never knew the human skin could be as sensitive to air currents as is my wife’s. A good seventy-five feet away, and separated by innumerable walls, pieces of furniture, and passageways, she can still feel cool air rushing from the refrigerator. Why, I — stooped directly in front of it, with cold mashed potatoes on my groping fingers — can scarcely feel a thing!

About this time, to keep my wife from flying out to the kitchen to find out what culinary project I have in mind, I usually slam the door loudly, then begin again. However, she is rarely deceived, and the commentary continues, a bit more pointed as time rockets by.

“Everything will spoil!” is usually the next remark, made from a room considerably nearer my scene of pilferage than previously. I have gone to a great deal of trouble to prove to her, in a scientific paper, that leaving the refrigerator door open for 52 seconds will increase the temperature inside only 2.16 degrees (Fahrenheit), and this loss will be restored within 93 seconds after the door is closed again, but it has thus far failed to prevent her next remark, made from a point immediately behind my right shoulder: “You are going to ruin the refrigerator.”

(One night when the children were asleep, there was nothing more to watch on television, and we were happily chatting and relaxing over a nightcap, I quietly asked my wife, “Why would leaving the door open ruin the refrigerator?” She looked at me coldly—more coldly than the freezing compartment ever had — before replying. “Why, for the same reason that running up stairways all day long would shorten your life — it overworks the machinery. Good night.”)

“I’ll be finished in a moment,” I call out to her, knocking over a loosely capped bottle of olives in my haste to save the doomed refrigerator.

“Just tell me what it is you want and I’ll get it for you,” she says. “I know exactly where everything is.”

“Oh, I’m not hungry,” I say at this point, straightening up and firmly closing the refrigerator door (possibly just in the nick of time). “I was merely cooling off an overheated elbow I’ve been leaning on a bit too much.” I then make a dignified exit from the kitchen. My wife then opens the refrigerator door and leaves it that way for fifteen minutes while she cleans up the olive juice and realigns things I have allegedly moved out of conformation during my tour de force.

Not only is our refrigerator still running perfectly, but I am keeping my weight under control very nicely. So perhaps my wife is worried about me, after all, instead of the refrigerator. Quien sabe?