The last cup of coffee I made yesterday, I ran out of the liquid whitening stuff. I hesitate to call it 'cream', since I suspect, it's not and I don't want to read the label too closely just in case I'm right.
I had a container of the powdered whitening stuff (I drink coffee for the effect, which in my case, is very much a coals to Newcastle situation; "Owls to Athens"? I never heard that in all the years I lived in Germany, not once. I wanna know who says that. Who? What? Oh, never mind!) and I was (unpleasantly) surprised as to how much I had to pour into the cup to get the coffee off of pitch black (or vice versa if you're being catty).
On the bottom of the container is a 'best by' stamp that I realized was actually from a while back. Technically, it was from the last millennium, but what's a decade between friends and amateur chemists. I haven't had a car for as long as I've had this coffee creamer. When I bought it, William Clinton was President and now, it's Barack Obama. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was in the Seventh House and NASDAQ aligned with Mars and now most of our investments wouldn't cover the cost of a Snickers bar.
I wonder if I'd have used it up or more of it and faster, had I paid more attention to the 'best by' date--and, thinking larger for just a moment, what if each of us had a 'best by' date. I shudder to think of what mine might be, but would all of us not be better off if this were the case? That old admonition to 'stay away from so-and-so, he's having an off day' could become much more exact and precise.
My kids have long suspected(I think) that their old man is past it; a quick check of my 'best by' date would confirm that and remove all doubt. Admittedly, I fear at any given moment, there'd only be about a dozen and a half folks on the entire planet who'd be on top of their game, but that's not the scary part. That none of them would speak English is causing me to wonder:
Τι χρησιμοποιεί για το δόλωμα για ένα Babelfish? I hope the owls leave me enough worms.
-bill kenny
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