The Martyrdom of the Fridge

As summer term began, I got a new roommate. I knew Dynée from the Gaming Club and we both figured we'd be better bets than getting random roommates. So far, that assumption seems to have been correct.

Dynée moved her stuff into the empty space left by Fred, who moved into a house off-campus on the way to moving back to France. Despite having more in the way of consumer appliances, we managed to fit everything we both owned into the room. Including Dynée's fridge, which was twice as large as mine.

I have a small refrigerator of the type often referred to as a "dorm fridge." It's square and it'll hold leftovers and condiments adequately, as well as a few canned beverages. At the time, I used mine mostly to keep my insulin cold and chill water. Being on the university meal plan, there wasn't much need to keep food around the room. I had a jar of peanut butter.

The way the meal plan works during the year, you get either 19 or 16 meals a week, usable at the all-you-can-eat cafeteria, the other cafeteria, the pizza place, the hamburger place or Grab 'n' Go, the convenience store. The latter was sort of new and immensely popular, as it allowed students to procrastinate and then buy armloads of cup noodles and candy bars at the end of the week to sustain them until the next week. I would generally buy apple juice when I had extra points, which fit the fridge admirably.

Unfortunately, over the summer the meal plan had two options: no food or 21 meals a week, only usable in the cafeteria. I can't reliably get to the cafeteria anywhere near 21 times a week, so I made the obvious choice. Dynée and I bought rice and noodles, a huge sack of onions and a larger one of potatoes. Then we bought celery, carrots, sausage and eggs. The latter group, although smaller in size, required refrigeration.

We also bought rice mixes and macaroni mixes and food of dubious merit from the Canned Food Warehouse. We were doing pretty well cooking in the dorm room with only an electric kettle and a rice cooker, especially because we could fit so much stuff between my small fridge and Dynée's medium fridge.

Dynée and I got along pretty well, especially with food preparation to bond us. I am good at heating things up edibly, and Dynée is good at cleaning up afterwards. We both enjoy whole wheat bread, macaroni, cheese and similar comfort foods. She's allergic to 3 Musketeers bars, so my medicinal stash of them was safe. Unlike some past roommates, Dynée understood that once food is partially eaten, it must either be thrown out or put in the refrigerator. She also vacuumed of her own free will.

The one problem was her fridge. It had been moved from another dorm with the contents still inside. Then she plugged it in and promptly left town for various reasons. The strawberries and milk inside did not take this well, and I was forced to throw them out to combat the stench. Afterwards, it still smelled a little off, particularly when it was opened. I traced this to the freezer compartment, where ice cream sandwiches had thawed and then refrozen as part of the freezer's layer of permafrost.

Being a genius, I decided to remedy this with drastic measures. While several people (including Dynée) milled about, waiting to play Minion Hunter, I took an icepick to Dynée's freezer compartment.

Chip chip chip. Ice came off. Chip chip chip. Chip chip POP. I had misjudged the thickness of the ice, and plunged the icepick straight into the freezer's coolant system. A friend later referred to it as "scoring a critical hit on the fridge." I had just taken the life of an appliance.

But it didn't know it was dead yet.

It was one of those moments when time almost stands still. A refrigerator, I knew, is a terribly expensive thing, and a breach in the coolant system is a bad thing for a refrigerator to undergo. I quickly looked around, turning my head as much as I could without anyone noticing. Could I pretend that I didn't do it and walk away? No. The hissing noise and the column of pressurized gas turning white in the room's heated air was a dead givaway.

Oh, crud. I put my finger over the hole in a sort of instinctual attempt to keep the coolant inside. Seconds later, the reason why that was also a bad idea crept into my brain via my cold fingertips, so I removed my hand and put my handkerchief over the tiny hole. I'm not sure what I thought that would accomplish.

The only person who seemed to have noticed was Spider, one of the people waiting to play Minion Hunter. She unplugged the fridge for me, which I guess was a good idea, and then time not only resumed its flow but went at breakneck speeds. I remember apologizing a lot to a lot of random people, Dynée among them, and vowing to pay for the refrigerator or repairs thereon.

Not paying much attention to me, Dynée and the clot of gamers moved into the lounge, leaving behind Spider and myself by the ruins of the fridge.

Once the coast was clear, I cursed. Twice. Then Spider started laughing and laughing - she's a bit of a notorious pottymouth and had apparently been waiting the whole time to see what I'd say. We transferred the stuff from Dynée's dead fridge into mine, and managed to fit all the perishable food Dynée and I owned, except for a jar of pickles, into a space under a third of its previous size. Since it was the evening, that was about all I could do.

With a heavy heart, I joined the people playing Minion Hunter.

As it turned out, the refrigerator would cost more to fix than replace. We could find no cheaper replacement refrigerators, so I bit the bullet and gave Dynée a large sum of money. She decided not to buy a fridge after all, and we've managed ever since with my smaller fridge.

Dynée's fridge sat malevolently beside my living fridge for days. I knew from experience with normal refrigerators at home that there were businesses one could call to donate old refrigerators, and failing that, that there were places one must call to dispose of dead fridges so the freon could be removed safely. However, after driving from store to store and making call after call, looking for fridges, I was not in the mood at all to deal with any more fridge problems. Besides, I reasoned, the freon was all gone anyway after my rash act.

So Spider and I did a shameful thing, while Dynée looked on. After midnight one night I scouted out the hallway, the lounge, the elevator and the trash room in the basement. There was one Dumpster nearly empty and large enough to accept the dead fridge. I sealed the door of the refrigerator with duct tape and Spider and I, being almost equally tall and fit to carry heavy things, carried it carefully to the elevator. Dynée walked ahead as our scout.

Spider and the fridge and I fit barely into the elevator. Dynée waved and left as the doors closed. We waited. The elevator did not move. "Hey," I said, "we should push a button or something." Then the elevator went down into the basement.

I was incredibly nervous. I was pretty sure this was Not Allowed, and could possibly get me kicked out of university housing. Spider and I had thought of a story we could tell if caught, but it was admittedly lame. If we had been encountered moving the fridge in the hall, we'd just be moving it for a friend. In the elevator, moving it out. In the basement, our story broke down - the best we could come up with was that we were moving it out but pressed the wrong button.

Obviously, there was nothing one could say if interrupted while placing the fridge in the Dumpster.

Luckily, nobody caught us. We tipped it in, sloshing some rancid melted ice and ice cream sandwich water on ourselves, mostly me. I tossed a couple of trash bags on top of the refrigerator to buy us some time and we ran for the elevator.

We got back to the room with no problems. I felt like I'd just disposed of a body and spent the next day on tenterhooks, waiting for someone to knock on the door, fridge in tow. At the very least, I expected that someone might put up a hand-scrawled sign in the trash room commanding us not to throw out large appliances. None of this manifested.

It still took a while to get the rancid fridge smell off my hands.