Fridge Magnets and Memory: Part 1
Fridge magnets are more than tacky souvenirs. They’re vessels for our memories.
I was getting a glass of water at a friend-of-a-friend’s party when I noticed their fridge. Or rather, what was on it. Every single magnetized inch of it was covered in souvenir refrigerator magnets. They came from every continent and from many of the planet’s better-known islands, and they had been lovingly selected for maximum heinousness. A neon-green palm tree against an ineptly-painted sunsetted sky (for Florida). Plastic simulations of Taiwanese dim-sum and googly-eyed camels. There was a thermometer with the Dubai skyline printed on it, and a wooden depressive looking lion from Kenya, and an Australian boomerang with a startled kangaroo drawn on it . And more, so much more.
I stood there losing myself in my magnets for a moment, imagining the places that they came from, the particular trips that they represented, and also what sort of human being thought that making magnets shaped like screaming lobsters was a path to success in tourist retail.
“My wife collects them from everywhere she goes. She likes them more if they’re ugly,” said the friend-of-a-friend in a resigned sort of way, as he noticed me noticing the magnets. The wife in question was away on business at the time of the party and I knew…
