Supplementary Ice

BY Elizabeth Yeter

“Oh yeah, you’ve got a problem here,” the repair man says, handing me a bag of peas partially encased in ice. For the last three days I’ve been mopping up water from the floor around my refrigerator. And now, as he hands me pints of ice cream and Eggo waffles, I can see that puddles of ice have formed all over my freezer.

“I think it’s the icemaker. I’m gonna switch it out for a new one,” he announces confidently. About an hour later I’m loading my chilled goods back in as if nothing has happened. And, to my delight, he’s even chipped out the accumulated icicles.

“It took me so long because of this little piece,” he says, showing me a small plastic rectangle.

“See this part?” He points to a curved notch on one side. I nod. “It’s too big, so your water was spraying all over the place,” he says. “Was the piece broken?” I ask. “Nope, just too big,” he replies. I’m confused. We’ve had the same refrigerator for seven years and never had this problem. But oh well. Everything’s back to normal, so I don’t question further.

Two hours later I’m craving a frosty glass of water. I grab a cup from the cabinet and merrily head to the freezer. You know where this is going. No ice. What?! Impossible. This is a BRAND. NEW. ICEMAKER.

I sit down and sulk as I sip my room temperature water. Where’d I put my cellphone? I need to get that guy back here to fix this thing or my summer is ruined! Dramatic, but I love ice.

And just when I’m about to make that phone call, I hear the muted crash of ice being deposited into a bucket. I run to the refrigerator. Yay! It’s working! See, it just needed a little time to warm up, I think to myself. I scoop up half the ice, plop it into my glass of water, and sigh in relief that my beverage troubles are over.

But they aren’t. As it turns out, this icemaker is S-L-O-W. Whereas the old one took about an hour to deposit each tray of ice, this one takes over two hours. Unfortunately this does not keep up with the ice demands of my family.

I complain for two solid days about this situation. I text my mom. I admonish the kids to use ice sparingly. When I run into a friend at the supermarket and she asks me, “How are you?” instead of responding with “fine,” I gripe about the icemaker.

And then it hits me. Wow, this is such a first-world problem. Those are problems like slow wifi causing your Youtube videos to keep buffering and the long lines at Coscto. Things that people living in so called first-world countries like the US where I live worry about. Meanwhile, people in other countries are struggling to find their next meal or wondering if they’re children will ever get to go to school so they can break the cycle of poverty that’s been the norm for generations. And here I am upset about not enough ice.

So I rummage through the cabinets and spot my prize tucked behind a stack of nestled mixing bowls. A simple, sixteen-compartment ice cube tray. I fill it with water and realize that wow, it’s been years since I’ve done this. Instead of lamenting about this insignificant blip in daily life, I commit to changing my attitude.

In addition to shifting perspecitves, I also solve my problem. I will make supplementary ice. To make up for the icemaker’s slowness is really quite simple, but requires some effort on my part. Not much effort, but more than I was doing. Whenever I go the freezer, I dump the tray of ice into the holding bucket and fill it up again with water. Simple, right, but when I was stuck in complain mode, I didn’t even think a solution existed for my ice shortage.

It wasn’t my situation that needed to change, it was me. I needed to solve the problem. I needed to have a better attitude. By refusing to do those things, I had given my power away - to an refrigerator part. So, please, take your power back. Go out and make some supplementary ice of your own.