Margarine

I got a hankering for English muffins the other day. I’m not sure why, but I suddenly said to myself. “Huh. I really want an English muffin. I mean, I really want an English muffin. I would happily punch somebody for a muffin. I might even go as high as stabbing. Shooting, probably not, but yeah, I’d stab for an English muffin.”


The funny thing is that I wasn’t using my ‘inner’ voice when I said that. The really funny thing is that I happened to be in a studio wide meeting with about eighty other people. Needless to say, I now get lots of room at company meetings.

Anyway, I bought some English muffins after work and brought them home, fully intending to pop one in the toaster, slather it with some butter-like substance after it was brown, and then consume it while laughing maniacally.

Before I tossed a muffin in the toaster, however, it then occurred to me to check if I actually had any margarine on hand. This necessitated that I open the fridge, which I only do about once a year. You see, my fridge is full of stuff that I can’t identify. There are bags and cartons and all sorts of things, for lack of a better term, that have been there since the late Pleistocene.

NOTE: I used to keep my refrigerator completely empty, but discovered that ninjas were lurking in there. I then packed it full of stuff just to deny them a hiding space. This also explains why I keep an axe handle atop the fridge (also good for fighting cabinet weasels).

I dimly recall buying some margarine a while back, so I set about trying to find it. It was in the back of the top shelf, past what once might have been a watermelon or some sort of spider carcass. I hauled out the margarine and checked the expiration date. It expired in October. Of 2004.

This seemed a touch old, but I opened it anyway, just to see if it was still good. It was brown, which is generally not a good color for margarine. I poked it and it made a ‘thip!’ sound and bobbled a bit. This was unexpected, so I poked it harder. It made another noise and visibly shrank from my finger.

I think I accidentally created a new life form.

I decided to keep it and named it ‘Fridgey.’ Now, Fridgey isn’t much of a pet yet, but I’m working on socializing it. I pet it every day and leave little bits of foodstuff from the kitchen at work out to see if it will eat anything. Hopefully, if I raise it with enough love and kindness, I will be able to teach it to eat people’s faces.

I also hope that Fridgey is actually alive, because otherwise I’ve become emotionally attached to a bit of desiccated food spread and bought it a little hat.

Cheers,
-Jason