A moment before the obvious link.
Yes, I'll link to one
of the many copies that abound on the web of that classic text. Doing so
was rather obvious, perhaps unavoidable. But don't think that I'm not also going
to tell a story about how I first encountered that text. After all, it was before
the web (not only before I first encountered the web, but even when interent
use meant at best a BBS or textual e-mail), and I really did see it on the refrigerator
of an old friend whom I was visiting. I'm not fully sure about this, but to
the best of my knowledge, the book itself grew out of the popularity that the
kindergarten piece, orginally a transcribed speech, attracted from ...
yep, refrigerator doors.
If that's true, it would seem that Fulghum himself owes his (perhaps fleeting)
fame to refrigerator doors. That being the case, perhaps it's fitting that a
book he published a few years later, Uh-Oh: Some Observations from Both Sides
of the Refrigerator Door, has that door both in its title, and in one of
the essays (accessible on the
Amazon.com pages devoted to the book):
Refrigerators. On a very local scale, a refrigerator
is the center of the universe. On the inside is food essential to life, and
on the outside of the door is a summary of the life events of the household.
Grocery lists, report cards, gems of wisdom, cartoons, family schedules, urgent
bills, reminders, instructions, complaints, photographs, postcards, lost and
found items, and commands.
Would I quote that on my own refrigerator door? Frankly, I doubt it. The door
is crowded enough as is. There's more than enough room for it on a web page, however.
Go to: Are there refrigerator doors in cyberspace?