Yes, I’m Canadian

I can feel my brain being reprogrammed every time I open the fridge door.

No, this isn’t some kind of rant against EM radiation from home appliances or garishly promotional food packaging. We have simply reconfigured our fridge door from right-hand opening to left-hand opening, and I swear it’s giving me brain tumours!

Though you may not know it, a handy feature of most modern “freezer-on-top” refrigerators (unless you have one of those Internet fridges, in which case you have bigger problems, my friend) is that you can move the hinges from one side of the appliance to the other. Jess and I got home from shopping yesterday, and I very casually declared, fresh tub of melting ice cream in hand, “I think I’ll switch over the door on the fridge.”

Given the layout of our kitchen, this is a perfectly logical change to make. But boy are those two pages of simplistic-looking instructions in the refrigerator manual misleading. (Yes, I read manuals.)

An hour and two litres of melted ice cream later, the door hinges had been moved, Jess had been traumatised by a perceived near-dedigitation, and neither of us could open the fridge in one try.

I expect it’ll take us a couple of weeks to reprogram our brains to the new door-opening direction. In the meantime, I’ve stuck a large “PULL” sign on the appropriate corner of the door. It hasn’t helped at all.