Take My Fridge, Puh-lease

Ya know that Simpsons episode where Homer gets a free trampoline ("trambampoline!") and has a great time with it until too many of the local kids injure themselves on it, forcing him to try to return it, however he then discovers what all trambampoline owners know to be true: that once you have a trambampoline, it quickly loses its charm and causes too many broken bones, and eventually you can't even give it away ... and then Bart advises his father that the best way to get rid of the thing is to put a bike lock on it, turn away, and count to three? You know the one?

No?

Well then, that makes this difficult. Let's just pretend you do know the one I mean.

You do? Excellent. Well, I've experienced the same damn thing this week at my house. Okay, maybe not the same damn thing, but a similar damn thing.

Wifey and I live in a house that was the original house on a very long property. Naturally, sometime during the 70s or 80s, the owner decided to build three units behind the house and divide the place into four. So now, although our place is the original and the biggest (slightly) of the four, and it's most definitely a house, it has to be referred to as 'Unit 1'. This also means that we have who-knows-who layabouts and ruffians living in the other three units at any given time, doing who-knows-what to the place and not caring, because it's not theirs.*

* Note: I don't hate all renters; but I do hate inconsiderate renters.

One such example occurred on Sunday afternoon, when the young lads from Unit 3 dragged a fridge out of their garage and brought it down to the nature strip, where they left it, with total disregard for us who had to look at it and move around it, and the fact that it now appears to be our discarded fridge. Because these guys are particularly useless when it comes to disposing of their own rubbish and taking responsibility for their own gear, I silently fumed as I looked out my window on-and-off Sunday afternoon and realised that they had no intention of doing anything about this fridge now that it was out of their sight. It was someone else's problem now that they don't have a clear view of the street. Namely my problem. Thanks, fellas.

It's a big fridge, too. About as big as the one in this picture.

First thing I did was go out there and open the door right up, because anyone with half a brain - which means not the guys from Unit 3 - knows you're not allowed to leave a fridge or washing machine, etc, on the nature strip for hard rubbish collection or the like with the doors still attached. Kids climb in these things and suffocate when they can't open the doors again from the inside. Animals, too - although animals probably aren't playing 'hide and seek' at the time. Also, it means nothing dangerous is hiding away inside the thing to jump out and attack in fear/self-protection when the council workers come to lift it up and take it away. So the guys from Unit 3 were already pissing me off on a few counts for leaving the door closed. And also because our next hard rubbish collection date is over two months away.

Also, one of their number parks his car (complete with his trailer for a home renovator's service - think Jim's Mowing, although it's not that company) parked right along the front of the property in the street, although he doesn't do the clever thing and roll down a bit so passing cars can see the fridge - oh no - he parked so that he completely (and unnecessarily, I might add) blocked the sight of the fridge from any passers-by who might want to load it onto their own trailer. They'd have to have a trailer handy to take it away, too - and because of this dude's lack-of-parking-skills, anyone coming from one end of the street wouldn't even see the fridge. Talk about making it difficult!

(I should also mention here that when I opened the fridge door - and the little freezer door inside it, just to be sure - I noticed that it was very cool inside, and half the freezer was frozen over with huge chunks of ice. So it was definitely a working fridge they were throwing away!)

All Sunday afternoon and night, the fridge just sat there ... half-obscured by the trailer, and not going anywhere. Monday morning I noticed that the fridge door was shut again, so out I went once more and opened it wide. The ice had all melted away, revealing half a packet of fruit loaf and three ice cube trays which had been impossible to detect in the un-defrosted freezer section the previous day. I dread to think how long they've been in there. I didn't dare touch them.

All day Monday, the darn fridge just sat there, stupidly shielded from anyone driving left to right down the street. It looked like it was going to be there forever, or at least until I did something about it.

So last night, remembering the aforementioned Simpsons episode, I took a simple A4 sheet of paper, a black texta, and four bits of sticky tape, went out to the fridge, and stuck the following sign on the back of it, facing the road:

"FREE"

This morning it was gone.

It had sat there, totally ignored, for over 50 hours, and then I added that sign to it, and it didn't even last 11 hours.

I don't know whether to be amused or disgusted.

(I was tempted to stick a sign to it which read: "DO NOT TAKE", just to test the experiment even further, but I didn't want to risk people actually leaving it there who might otherwise have taken it away. I still find it amazing that it took a sign giving people 'permission' to take the fridge away before anyone decided to help themselves to it.)

So what are we? Just a pack of feral scavengers, who only find interest in something if it's free and/or not meant for us in the first place??

And does anyone want any fruit loaf? I have extra.



.