Fridge Magnets and Memory: Part 2

Souvenir magnets are our memories, transformed into the form of a dumb resin crocodile that we can put in our kitchen.

Let’s consider my very own collection of kitchen crap-magnets.

One of my favorites is a horribly realistic-looking plastic slice of Key Lime pie that I bought at the Tampa airport in Florida, the state in which I was born and traveled to every year of my life — up until 2017, when the last of my grandparents died and I stopped having any real reason to return.

I picked up the key lime pie magnet that year as I waited for my last flight out. I bought it in part because of how unsettlingly natural it looks, an occupant of the food-magnet uncanny valley. I also bought it because it reminds me in exquisite detail of the Publix key lime pie that my grandparents would always have magically waiting for me in their unmagnetic and naked fridge at their house whenever I visited. I also, also bought it because that house in Tampa had an ancient set of 1970s fruit-shaped fridge magnets stuck to the boiler in the garage, where I would rearrange them into the shape of a mutated dog every time I visited, and every magnet I own reminds me of that small act of expression.