Expiration Dates: "More Like Guidelines"

Everyone has that one person in their family who doesn't "believe" in expiration dates. (After all, milk that goes bad just turns into cottage cheese, right?) In our family, that person is Phyllis. I enjoy going through her and Dad's refrigerator and cupboards and culling the fossilized foods and medicines.

Here's a little background: Dad is retired military, meaning we moved every two or three years until I graduated high school.

Which means the jar of popcorn seasoning I unearthed that expired in 1991 moved with us at least three times. THREE TIMES. That small jar managed to travel across state lines, into and out of four houses, and come to rest in a cupboard hundreds of miles from its original home. And Mom still insisted that it was "still good."

This is a phrase I hear often when purging Phyl's house of food so old it has evolved language ability. I've never been able to determine whether by "still good" she means "good to eat" or "probably nonlethal," but I have nearly had to armwrestle green Cheddar cheese from her because it is "still good." (She has actually attempted to argue the point that cheese is just mold, so it's okay if it's covered with colonies of penicillin so advanced they have independently developed democracy.)

When I mentioned this post to my dad, he told me to be sure to remember The Visine Incident. Our story begins with Dad, eyes red and irritated from our famous Alabama pine pollen, rummaging through the cabinet for some eye drops. He found a half-full bottle and applied several drops to each eye. Disturbingly, both eyes began to burn unbearably immediately after application. Through his tears, Dad peered at the Visine bottle and discovered that the liquid inside had expired no less than ten years before. When confronted, Mom insisted that she had used the Visine recently and it hadn't bothered her. She ventured the theory that Dad's eyes were just too sensitive. Dad ventured the theory that eye drops that have been allowed to ferment into vinegar would have fried the cornea of even the manliest eyeball.

This is not to say that Dad is the most normal human being. He writes grocery lists on his iPad, for one thing. We also had to teach him how to put together an acceptable outfit when he retired and went from camouflage BDUs to civilian clothes - those first few weeks, he came downstairs in everything from navy chinos and white socks to a Hawaiian shirt and dress shoes. Bless his heart, it took him months to learn that a black belt and brown shoes just aren't okay.

But both my parents are wonderful. Really, really strange, but wonderful. And Dad's eyes are still a delicate shade of pink that matches the vile hue of the bleu cheese I had to throw out of Mom's refrigerator a few months ago.

It was "still good."