What’s Cold, Gray, Hard, And In The Refrigerator?

No, not those leftovers back in the right-hand corner. Guess again.

I’ll give you a hint: Have you ever been to college and lived in a dorm?

No, not your roommate’s retainer.

Give up?

Well, one of the stories I’m writing takes place in a college dorm in 1968. Back in those dim, dead days, we didn’t have little refrigerators in our rooms, children; we had one common kitchenette for the whole dorm. Ah, Jane, you remember, don’t you?

When you share a refrigerator with a bunch of other people, you quickly learn that anything unsecured is anybody’s. So one of a freshman’s first purchases was a lockbox, in which to keep one’s food.

One would think that a food thief wouldn’t scruple to steal an entire lockbox, but I don’t remember that happening. One went to the store, one bought, say, a package of steak (or, as we called it for some forgotten reason, snake), one brought it home, and one locked it in the box until needed. Leftovers were also locked in the box.

Sometimes, people left school or left the dorm or went home for a long holiday and abandoned their leftovers, lockbox, and all. Those people may — I don’t say they will, mind you, but I do say they may — burn in hell.

I confess, I’ve envied various people their jobs and perqs from time to time, but one person I have never envied: Whoever had the job of cleaning the dorm fridge at the end of the semester.

And that’s enough of that.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character gets even with a food thief.

MA