Expiration Date

Expiration Date

The other day I was going through some stuff in the pantry – you know – checking dates. Some stuff you buy sounds good when you buy it but then you realize when you get it home that you’ll never use it.

For instance, I like water chestnuts, so I thought I’d buy a couple of cans of water chestnuts and just eat them out of the can. I’m like that. You may think it uncouth or think me a slob, but I’m too old for your opinion of me to matter. Think what you will. I will eat stuff out of a can… with a fork or spoon of course… usually not with my fingers.

Anyway, I opened one of the cans of water chestnuts and dug in. Much to my dismay, they were nothing like the ones you find in Chinese food. They are crunchy, mostly tasteless, with a very unpleasant – to me at least – texture. I ate a few bites, then tossed the remainder of the can in the disposal. I know, wasting food is really bad, my grandma used to remind me of that every time I didn’t clean my plate. “Little kids are starving over in (you name the country) and you waste food? Shame on you!” So, this is why I’m now a fat old man: I eat everything on my plate every single time, no matter how much is on it. Thanks, Grandma!

Back to the water chestnuts…

If you remember I bought two cans of water chestnuts, took a few bites out of one, then tossed the remainder down the disposal… sorry grandma. Enough of the water chestnuts. I forgot I bought two cans so when I saw was going through the pantry the other day I found the second can of water chestnuts. I looked at the date on the can and it said “Use by 12/2/2019”. OK, so now it’s 7/5/2023. The water chestnuts that I’ll never eat are 3 1/2 years out-of-date. They’ve reached their expiration date. I’m not going to eat them, so I tossed them into the garbage. Sorry, Grandma!

But that’s not the only out-of-date thing I found in my pantry, I found several other items that had either passed their expiration date or their “Best used by” date. For example, I found a big can of black olives, which I like on salads and pizza and would’ve eaten if I hadn’t forgotten them. When I looked at the date on the can it said “Best used by 6/11/2018”. Its best-used-by date was over five years ago. But to me “best used by” does not mean “if you eat this it will make you very sick or kill you, it means “it-would-have-been-better-five-years-ago-but-you-won’t-die-if-you-eat-it-so-go-ahead-eat-it”.

I don’t think so!

I found five or six things in my pantry that were either past their expiration date or “best-used-by” date, which both mean “throw the stuff out”. So I did. And then I went through my refrigerator and found some disgusting out-of-date things hidden behind newer things – apparently for quite a long time.

After I got done with my exhausting clean-up, I sat down in my recliner to pensate. That’s not a word you know, so don’t open up a dictionary or scour the web for it. You won’t find it. It’s not a word but it should be. I made it up but it is a very good word. To “pensate” means to cogitate, to dwaddle upon, to contemplate something while drifting off to sleep.

All that pensating led me to nod off in the middle of the afternoon.

Young people never pensate, and would rather be caught dead than nodding off in the middle of the day – they’ve got too many fun things to do. I have no more fun things to do, so I clean out my pantry and refrigerator and pensate.

But my pensating did not come to naught. It led me to an epiphany – another word – this time a real one – that I really like. My epiphany was something that I would rather not dwell on and usually try not to. But pensating led me to an epiphany which led me to the realization that I have an expiration date.

But don’t be smug…so do you.

I went to the doctor the other day and he said something about me not being “that” old. My doctor isn’t even fifty yet, and while he may know about draining carbuncles, prescribing pills, A1C blood tests. and giving shots, he knows nothing about old age – a subject with which, as I reminded him, I am becoming all too familiar. I told him I am nearing my expiration date, to which he replied that I was surely not and that I have many good years left. He doesn’t know anything about my expiration date. But one thing he’s sure of is…that if I’m dead he can’t bill me or my Medicare. So it’s only wishing thinking on his part about when he tells me my expiration date is not near.

Well, I hate to bring this up, but not one of us lives forever. The older I get the closer I get to my expiration date – I know it.  I think it’s a swell thing that none of us know our actual expiration date. Can you imagine if we had our expiration dates tattooed on our butt cheeks? Something like “JOEL M. HETTLE, JR. Expires on 7/18/2034”.

We don’t want to know that – at least I don’t. 

Yes indeedy my dear friends. We all have an expiration date and not one of us knows what it is. Unlike a jar of pickles, we don’t know when we expire which is a good thing, I think. I mean it would be absolutely horrible knowing my expiration date. Every turn of the calendar or chiming of the clock would be a reminder that our expiration date was getting closer.

But clocks or chimes or calendars aside –  each one of us has an expiration date and not one of us knows that date and that’s a good thing.

And ladies, I have some really bad news for you – my “best-used-by” date has long since passed, I’m so sorry to say.