In the practice of tolerance, one’s enemy is the best teacher.
Dalai Lama
I heard a muffled but familiar voice apparently coming from inside my refrigerator.
“ Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto,” the voice said.
For a moment, I thought perhaps the Pope was trapped in there.
I flung open the door, but no pope, just a carton of almond milk, a dozen eggs, romaine lettuce, mushrooms (the kind that don’t make you hallucinate), a Mexican beer, a door full of various salad dressings, pickles, and eight types of mustard.
Then I opened the door to the icebox.
Suddenly, the wind chimed. My microwave vent fan came on, along with a series of beeping sounds that meant my oven had reached its prescribed preheating temperature. In this case, 9,000 degrees Fahrenheit, same as Hell.
Strange things were obviously afoot at the Circle K.
Then the voice spoke again.
“If you eat it, you will get fat,” my icebox said.
I looked at the warning label on the new medication I had picked up a Publix earlier that day: “This drug may impair the ability to operate a vehicle or machinery. Use care until you become familiar with its effects.”
Good Lord, I thought.
Is normal blood pressure worth this torture?
But then I realized where I had heard the voice.
“Aren’t you the voice that told Ray Kinsella to plow under his corn and build a baseball field?” I asked sheepishly.
“More or less,” my icebox said.
“You’re not about to send me to Chisholm, Minnesota, are you?” I asked.
“No,” my icebox said. “I’m here about your Facebook page.”
I picked up the medication and reread the warning label.
“You recently accepted a friend request from someone who means us harm,” the icebox said. “His posts suggest that nobody reads newspapers anymore and that people get all their news from social media. He suggests newspapers are dinosaurs with nothing much to offer.”
“Oh, that guy,” I said, realizing who my icebox was referring to. “He’s harmless.”
“Might I remind you that your income is derived in part from newspaper advertising revenue,” my icebox said. “He is not only questioning your usefulness but threatening your ability to keep frozen waffles in here.”
Which reminded me of a joke I had just made up.
“I ran into a guy last week who owned a Waffle Hut restaurant,” I told my icebox. “He was introducing new gluten-free waffles to his menu. As a promotion, he hired a handyman to glue five waffles to the top of his sign and five more to the bottom. After the job was finished, he asked the handyman how much he owed him. No charge, the handyman said. They were glue ten free waffles.”
“Why do they let you anywhere near a keyboard?” my icebox said.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “That was hilarious.”
“So, you’re not going to take this threat seriously,” my icebox said.
“Well, a man who lives in a glass house shouldn’t throw stones,” I said.
“What does that mean?” my icebox said.
“I can’t be too critical of a man who criticizes newspapers while I’m writing a newspaper column about a conversation with an icebox,” I said.
“Yea, I saw you scribbling in that notebook at 2 a.m.,” my icebox said. “You looked bloody desperate.”
“Deadlines,” I said. “But what about your Facebook enemy? Are you going to sit idly by and do nothing?” my icebox said.
(The phrase ‘my icebox said’ is going to haunt you for days, dear reader.)
“I could hunt him down and tell him jokes,” I offered.
My icebox would have rolled its eyes if it had any.
“Look, he’s wrong about newspapers being dinosaurs,” I said. “Musicians didn’t throw away their guitars when the synthesizer was invented, did they? No! When I was a radarman in the Navy, I learned that in rough seas, radar waves will bounce off of large swells and appear as surface contacts on your radar scope. It’s called sea return. But it’s an illusion, no more real than a talking refrigerator.
"If I didn’t work for the LON, I might not even have a Facebook page. I wouldn’t really need one. As I see it, my Facebook friend has latched onto social media as a life preserver, something that makes him feel seen, valued. That’s the same reason I write these columns. So, I don’t imagine my Facebook friend and I are enemies at all.”
“Would you like some ice cream?” my icebox said.
“If I eat it, will it make me fat?” I answered.
“Probably," my icebox said.
Selah.