Mind the Expiration Date

Not long ago I read that eating pancakes and waffles made from old batter mix can be dangerous, if not lethal. It turns out that mites and other toxic micro-organisms can take up residence in a box of Aunt Jemima left on the pantry shelf for a prolonged period of time, making a sudden trip to the emergency room mandatory for Hungry Jack, who might otherwise become Jack Skellington in short order.

Has there ever been a better reason to go to Waffle House? God knows the ingredient turnover there must be wickedly fast. Besides, Waffle House is always open. Even FEMA knows that. Certain employees there have admitted that the agency knows how bad a natural disaster is when the local Waffle House has to close down. We should all take note.

The world’s refrigerators are filled with months-old boxes of take-out now imitating petri dishes at a biohazard lab, not to mention jars of jams and preserves sporting a quarter-inch thick glaze of slime. It’s the old food-in garbage-out paradigm that happens if one doesn’t periodically take stock.

The same goes for retailers. I remember the time I decided to make biscuits at home but needed some yeast to pull off the job. I walked up to the corner market and found several packets of Fleischman’s tucked in between the dryer sheets and Mr. Clean. That should have been a sign. But I still made the purchase along with two pointless Powerball quick picks before traipsing back home. It was only after putting all the dry ingredients into the big mixing bowl that I bothered to look at the expiration date on one of the packets of yeast. It read 1972 or something similar. No biscuits were made that day. And the sea was angry, in case you’re wondering.

Does everything have an expiration date? All of god’s creatures do, even desert tortoises from the Galapagos Islands who live so long that they can remember back to a time before all the gringos started showing up on boats and littering the place. Even mosquitoes have an expiration date which is thankfully very short. If you think about it, mosquitoes are real vampires, being born out of dark slime only to roam the air looking for victims so they can feast on blood.

As for other things and expiration dates, plastic seems to be bereft of an end date. Rust too. Neil Young knew the latter and wrote a song about it. He still sounds like a pressed weasel to me when he sings about it.

Humans certainly have an expiration date. It’ just not listed anywhere. But at least there are lots of employment opportunities in industries having to do with babies entering and cronies exiting—and every stage in between.

What about ideas? Do they have a cycle of birth, maturity, and exit? By their very nature, ideas are constantly being replaced by newer—and hopefully better—ideas, at least when someone is doing serious thinking. Not the “sky is falling” kind of thinking. More like “matter can be a particle and a wave simultaneously” kind of thinking.

Sadly, even the smartest thinking won’t solve every problem. That particle/wave thing won’t help you find your keys when you’re trying to go to Waffle House. That’s because you were about to make pancakes and realized the box of Bisquick you’re holding is older than your teenage son, who’s glaring at you from the dining table because his blood sugar is red lining. Then you remembered reading about mites in old boxes of pancake mix, so weren’t about to play Belgian Waffle roulette. After all, it’s your parental duty to get him to adulthood safely so he can establish a career and eventually pay for your assisted living apartment. Darwin had a name for that too. He called it the inverse law of oblivion.

As for Darwin, he surely was the most famous gringo who ever showed up at the Galapagos. But unlike the others, he was the quiet type who stayed in the background, taking lots of notes and drawing pictures in his sketchbook. And he was one of the few who didn’t litter. So the tortoises liked Charles. They thought he was a really nice guy. Now there’s something that will never go out of style.

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