Is this still good?

I am freaked out…..I repeat FREAKED OUT about poisoning myself by eating spoiled food. That might sound kinda odd considering that when I go over to someone else’s house, or even a restaurant for that matter, I don’t give it a second thought. I figure they must like me after all, they did invite me over for dinner. And well, even if they don’t like me (which is entirely possible since I don’t get many invites. Most of the time I end up being “guest”) it’s the same food they are feeding everyone else and they are good people. So if I just eat what everyone else is, I’ll be fine.

But when it comes to eating out of my refrigerator, I am glued to the expiration date. “What?!? It expires today…..gotta toss it.” They put an “expiration” date on there for a reason. They must have done some research on how long it is going to last. They probably paid some highly educated scientist hundreds of thousands of dollars to figure that out. Who am I to question that?

But wait. What about the food that expires tomorrow? What if there was a flaw in their calculation?? What if the highly paid scientist forgot to carry the ‘1’??? I did that once and ended up bouncing a series of checks! It cost me hundreds of dollars! I can’t possibly take that chance. No way! Out it goes.

Maybe this all goes back to some bad decisions I made as a teenager. You know…..working at the local fast food restaurant, taking home bags of leftover burgers with that “special sauce” to eat over the next couple of weeks. Yeah, looking back, they were probably way past their prime.

Or could this be a matter of pride? I couldn’t stand to answer all of the questions. “Wow, you were really sick, near death. And you did that to yourself?” Hmmm….almost sounds like attempted suicide. Next thing you know you are on the fourth floor of some hospital wing with a roommate that talks to the imaginary butterflies all around and the rotating staff member sitting on a chair at the foot of the bed because I am a “high risk patient” and need to be on 24 hour watch. No thanks. I’ll make a run to the grocery store for a new carton of milk.

You know, it could just be a self-preservation thing. I am all about the sanctity of life. As George Carlin says ”sanctity of life,…we made it up. You know why? ‘Cause we’re alive!”