Saturday, July 01, 2006

Graduation Day is Far Away...

I love popsicles. Ice cream. Ice cream bars. Your basic frozen treat. Love 'em. I love them in summer. I love them in winter. Especially after a yoga class. Wow. How good a popsicle, tastes. I tend to bite mine, not suck on them until they are little slivered points, working my way down. No. I chomp. Bat the frozen chunk around in my mouth as I chew, trying not to upset the little cavities that I now know I posses after my recent trip to the sliding scale community dentist. The cool, sugary liquid sliding down my esophagus. I can feel it all the way down to my chest. Yum. What a disappointment, then, to know that I live in a constant state of crappy freezer-hood. Anyone who has lived in an apartment with a tiny refrigerator that has one of those built in freezers, the kind that have the plastic door and the freezer tray and the door doesn't shut all the way, not really. And you have to defrost at LEAST twice a year, but might only manage it once a year. And then, only because the milk in the 'fridge is lukewarm due to the ice field in the freezer blocking any cold from happening throughout the rest of the appliance. At the same time it isn't actually FREEZING anything, either. Except that bag of chicken stock you made 6 months ago and haven't used because you'd need to excavate it from the frozen walls that engulf it.

Well, popsicles and ice cream and ice cream bars don't freeze in that kind of freezer. I should say "freezer", since I don't know that it really classifies as the same thing as the appliance that actually is a separate unit, in its own way, from the refrigerator south of it, (or north, if you have one of those fancy sub zero doohickies.) Oh sure, they're attached. It's as though it were one machine. But the doors. That's key. Grown up freezers have their very own door. A completely independent section that is free to freeze. Might even have their own temperature setting. Fake freezers, the "freezer" type that I am forever saddled with, those contraptions--well, I don't even know what to rightly call 'em. I used to think that owning my own car would be the true show of my entry into responsible adulthood. More so than having my own apartment and paying my bills and working and all that. That kind of responsibility is, at some point, for most people, just necessary. But a car. Now that was special. Above and beyond the normal adult markers. Well, I had a car for awhile. And between the car payment, the gas and the insurance, it wasn't worth it. There are places in this world where cars are just a peripheral in people's lives. Some places, one does not even NEED a car to get through life. Besides, it is easy enough to rent one, if I truly need one. Pshaw to the car.

No. I realize, now, what it is that I lack. The true entry into this adult world that I am excluded from. A proper freezer. The day I graduate from the "freezer" that doesn't freeze (it has something to do with the sugar content of the frozen treats, I've been told) to the refrigerator equipped with two outside doors, one for the cold stuff and one for the frozen...Well, my friends, that is the day I'll know that I've arrived.

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