What Adams Morgan and Alabama have in common

The first time my mom went refrigerator shopping, she strode into the Sears and asked to be directed to the "icebox" section. Baffled, the salesman led my mom to a shelf of coolers. My mom explained that she was looking for a much bigger cooler, one with a plug. According to my mom, she had to demonstrate the appliance's characteristic hum to a crowd of amused Sears employees, before they figured out how to translate her rural vocabulary.

I now realize that "icebox" is a perfectly apt name for a refrigerator--particularly mine. While your modern fridge is self-defrosting, mine coats over with layer upon layer of ice. This process gradually decreases the size of the freezer, which used to have the luxurious dimensions of a shoebox. It now can hold only one bag of French fries.

Quarts of ice cream, therefore, are completely out of the question, so I stash my Ben and Jerry's in the roomy freezers of my friends. Currently I have mango sorbet at Annette's apartment and cookies and cream in Sybil's freezer. I used to have chocolate-fudge-ripple at my friend Tori's condo, but her husband ate it. That's the risk you take when annexing appliances.

One time, my friends Zak and Missy, gave me a huge bucket of homemade almond ice cream for my birthday. I hated to see it go to waste, but there was no way it could fit into my freezer. I was left with only one choice: I ate the entire thing in one sitting.