Fridge poetry

There was a fad in the US about a decade ago now of fridge poetry. Companies were selling boxes of tiny thin magnets, each with a word on one side. At first it was just common English words, but then the boxes started to be specialized by theme. I was given a box of word magnets by my colleague Stephen from Arctic Studies; that had words related to cats, in addition to just normal English words like "the" "is" "and". The idea is to put a few of these words on the refrigerator. One person puts them up one way, then another member of the family comes along and changes the order of what is on the fridge, or takes out new magnets and adds to the sentence. It is a game that is played without rules and without a time frame; they are always on the fridge and anyone at anytime can read what is there and change it if they like. I've always thought it was a really neat way to communicate, reminded me a little bit of a game us employees at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum used to do. When they installed a new elevator in the courtyard infill building, they put in a posterboard, but no postings. Then a few thumb tacks got added. Occasionally there was a posting, and more thumbtacks made their way to the board. But when there weren't any flyers, the board was empty, except for the brightly colored thumbtacks. So sort of spontaneously, while standing alone and bored in the elevator, someone would arrange the thumbtacks in some sort of pattern: a happy face, a flower, a circle, etc. Then someone else would be in the elevator later that day or the next day, and they would move a few tacks, making a new pattern out of the existing pattern. 

I wish in a way that we had photo documented each of these phases, but it was something we just sort of spontaneously did, a way to communicate with each other or just sort of a graphiti tag, "I was here too." Then one day all the thumbtacks were gone, and the game ceased.  

I still have my box of cat magnets here with me in Iceland, but the Icelanders that have seen it seem really perplexed by it, so I am guessing the fridge magnet poetry fad never caught on here. There is of course still time, since this is a nice subtle way for family members living in the same house to say something to one another they might not normally say, or just to show off their poetic talent in the midst of everyday life.