Refrigerator Magnets

[Martin Hash]

While on a road trip through 4 National Parks and sight-sees along the way, my wife, Gwynne, & I stopped by to visit my cousin, Hilary & her husband, John, in Utah. Hilary & I really like each other: she refers to me with pride as the eccentric side of the family, and knows my Renaissance Myn goals: one of which is having 100 collections. Hilary likes to cheer me on: “You should buy refrigerator magnets at every national park,” she suggested.
“I already buy the national park pins, patches & coins,” I told her. “But I still count all those things as part of my National Park collection. Adding another thing wouldn’t up my collection count; and I already have 101 collections.”
“You can have more,” Hilary insisted. “John & I want to go to all the national parks too, and collect refrigerator magnets from the places we go. When we have enough, we’re putting a big sheet of metal on one wall in the Family room and magneting them all up for people to see.”
“Don’t encourage him,” Gwynne growled, scowling.
Hilary didn’t seem to take the warning and instead continued: “If you had a Refrigerator Magnet collection, you could do the same thing.”
Thinking positively, I replied: “I do have some refrigerator magnets but they’ve got sayings on them like: ‘I only do what the voices in my wife’s head tell me to do.’”
Hilary was getting quite excited at the prospect, and continued developing her plans for me: “See, you could build a collection of refrigerator magnets with sayings on them!”
I was catching on: “Our refrigerator in the pantry is covered with magnets the kids have put there: ones they’ve bought on there travels, and penguin magnets they’ve bought Gwynne over the years: Gwynne likes penguin refrigerator magnets.”
“See you’ve got the start of a collection right there, sayings & penguins & travel,” Hilary was nodding her head smugly.
Gwynne was not nodding but she did seem to accept the merit in Hilary’s idea.
I squinted, trying to see our pantry refrigerator in my minds eye: “I don’t know how many there are?” I was hopeful there were enough for a collection, and thought about it during the rest of our trip, even started buying refrigerator magnets at the national parks. One of the first things I did when we got home, before putting things away in fact, was to run into the pantry and see how many refrigerator magnets we had.
Collection 102:

Refrigerator Magnets.jpg