We just got a new freezer. Upright because we’re no long able to stand on our heads to reach for things in the bottom of the good old 38 year-old chest style. And also because said chest style no longer froze things.

A technicality, but an important one.

I was reminded of my first freezer. The one my parents had from the time I was small. Chest style. 26 cubic feet. Whatever that means.

To me, that just meant that it was large.

They had had this behemoth since they were married. It had far outlived its ‘best before’ date. Oh, it still froze anything and everything that was put into it. It just didn’t stay closed anymore.

Let me tell you about it . . .

Mom and Dad’s freezer, aptly named ‘Frigidaire’, sat in solitary glory, in the downstairs bathroom. In a space created especially for it. Beside the shower cubicle. And across from the ‘porcelain throne’.

For years, it had been humming busily along, doing . . . freezer stuff. Keeping cold things cold. And slowly filling with ice.

Every couple of years, Mom would take out whatever food was left in it, stack it all neatly aside, and attack the ice build-up with an ice pick and a butter knife. Then, she’d scrub it shiny, replace the food and start the whole cycle over again.

It was fun to watch.

Okay, yes, I probably should have helped, but why deprive Mom of something she so obviously enjoyed? Well, that she appeared to enjoy . . .

Okay, I should have helped. Geeze.

One thing of note: when one closed the freezer, one had to be very careful to push the handle in till it clicked, or in the middle of the night, or some other equally inconvenient time, the door would open. All by itself. With scary amusing results.

One afternoon, the house was quiet. Too quiet. I was in the bathroom . . . minding my own business. Without warning, the lid of the freezer opened. With an appropriately eerie squeal.

Eeeeeeeeeeee!

Now, my head knew that Dracula never really existed, except in the brilliant mind of Bram Stoker. And certainly, if he did exist, the last place he would appear would be in an old freezer. In the middle of the bathroom of the Stringam ranch house. By no stretch of the imagination would that be . . . romantic. (Does that word work here?) But, no matter how frantically and reasonably my head was whispering all of this to my heart, my heart was still expecting Count Dracula to sit up, in all his dark majesty, maybe with a touch of real frost in his dark hair, and say, “Good evening!”

My business of the moment forgotten, I charged out of the bathroom, frantically zipping my pants as I flew. Once in the family room, I stopped. Sanity returned.

And I started to laugh. And laugh.

I went upstairs and told my Mom. She laughed.

One by one, we told it to every member of the family. They all thought it was a huge joke.

Okay, we’re weird.

I did remember to go back into the bathroom and latch the freezer properly. Later. And every time thereafter.

But now, years later, whenever I see a glistening white freezer, I half expect the door to open and to see Dracula sit up and smile menacingly at me.

It still makes me want to . . . mind my own business.

This post was originally published on On the Border.