The New Fridge

Not too long ago, the time came to replace our old refrigerator. It wasn’t that our old refrigerator was no longer fridging; it was, more or less. It was, however, no longer icemaking, at least not the automatic way. You could still put water into those funky little plastic trays with several little compartments, if you had any funky little plastic trays with several little compartments, which I did, having found two in the very back of the bottom of the cabinet in the corner of the kitchen. They were nearly hidden behind the Lazy Susan , which really was lazy because it no longer Susaned, even a little bit. I easily extracted them by emptying the entire cabinet, lying on the kitchen floor, crawling sideways around Susan and stretching into the far, somewhat scary recess. You could then fill the funky little plastic trays with tap water (because you no longer purchased bottled water, because you had decided that tap water and food were better than bottled water and no food, but that’s another story), then place the funky little plastic trays in the freezer, spilling only about half the tap water, where, in due course, the tap water would freeze. You could then take the funky little trays from the freezer and, with a quick twist, get to see them completely disintegrate, because they were really old and really brittle.

So the time came to replace our refrigerator, which we did. It’s important to note that we were able to do so only because Jessica, our daughter, was and is an incredibly generous person; and Kevin, her boyfriend at the time, was but isn’t anymore, a manager at Lowes, and got a substantial manager’s discount. The new fridge is great. It’s big, it has all the bells and whistles, and it’s stainless steel. OK, it doesn’t actually have any bells or whistles, and it isn’t actually stainless steel. But it does have a working icemaker, a “lockable” cold water dispenser (I suppose to curb careless or indiscriminate drinking of water), and a 10-station adjustable, humidity controlled crisper drawer. And the door is painted with stainless steel colored metallic paint, so it looks just like stainless steel, sort of. Interestingly, it came with a removable protective plastic coating, very scratched-up, which the delivery guy suggested we keep on the fridge “for protection.” The logic of having the fridge be scratched-up so it wouldn’t get scratched-up, escaped me.

The new fridge also has a state-of-the-art, replaceable Refrigerator Ice & Water Filter made by PUR, a company whose name looks like “purr,” the sound, but I suspect is supposed to be pronounced like “pure,” the condition. I like the idea of having a water filter in our new fridge, and I’m sure filtered water is probably better for us than unfiltered water. In fact, the filter promises to “reduce 6 contaminates including lead and mercury.” I’m pretty sure municipal drinking water isn’t supposed to contain any lead or mercury, but it’s nice to know we’re covered, just in case. I was a bit concerned about how I would know when it was time to replace our replaceable filter until I discovered the “Water Filter Status” light. The little light bulb, usually green, turns yellow for awhile and then red when the filter needs replacing. Very handy, but how does the fridge really know if the filter really needs to be replaced? I doubt if it can measure the amount of lead or mercury or the other four unnamed contaminants in the filter at any given time. I doubt if it has a clock built in, or more aptly, a calendar, to measure the months of use. It might count the number of times ice was made or the number of times someone drank some indiscriminate water, or it might count the number of times the door has been opened since the filter was installed. It does have that little button that gets released and turns on the refrigerator light whenever the door opens, then turns it off again when the door closes (or so they claim: I for one have never crawled inside the fridge and closed the door to verify the claim).

Also, when the filter has been replaced, how does it know that it has? The fact is, it doesn’t know. Right under that aforementioned button that controls that aforementioned light, it says to “push switch 10 times in 5 seconds to reset indicator light to green” (or maybe it’s 5 times in 10 seconds). In any case, the fridge has no idea if the filter has been replaced or not, and I suspect no idea if it needs replacing or not. I’m pretty sure I don’t have lead or mercury in my water to start with or any of the other unnamed contaminants, so I’ve decided not to replace the filter, ever. However, when it turns from green to yellow to red, I will push the aforementioned button 10 times in five seconds, or maybe 5 times in 10 seconds, so my fridge and the world will believe I did.