Audra Krell

Out with the Old

Over the weekend we were putting up our Christmas trees and hanging out in the kitchen over dinner.  For some reason I decided to start going through our canned goods and throwing out things that could be old.  We had a hilarious time.  I was pulling things out and began finding cans expired from 2004, lots from 2005 and a few 2006ers.  It soon became a game to find the grossest, oldest item, was it the now brown jar of artichokes from 2003 or the  powdered gravy from 2000?   My son and his friend would look up lot numbers on the Internet if certain cans didn’t reveal the date of the their demise.

Everyone lost interest until I pulled out the the mother of all expired goods.  It was a can of Hatch’s Green Chile, from April of 1993.  We realized that it was an apparent tribute to the birth of our oldest son, as he was born in April of ’93.  I realize most of you are probably afraid to come over for dinner, but just feel free to ask me about expiration dates first, no hard feelings here.  I always respect a valid question.

You’d be shocked at the journey this can has made.  Purchased at some grocery store in Boulder, CO, the chile began it’s journey and traveled to our new apartment in Denver, then to a second apartment in Denver.  It found it’s way into a box and moved to a town outside of Vail, Colorado, then a year later to Scottsdale.  Five years into it’s shelf life it traveled back to Colorado to an apartment for six months and then back to Scottsdale.  It made it’s final trip to our current home, on Sept. 17, 2002.

Everyone thought we should make this our new yearly tradition, because we just had so much fun laughing over the rotting food.  But it will never be the same again.  All of the old is gone. I had to make five trips to the trash can, with several heavy bags to get rid of it all.  While it brought us all a great laugh, what was the point of lugging all that heavy stuff around for?  Most of it wasn’t even good anymore and these things from the past would have done nothing but make me and all of us sick.  Could have even poisoned us. 

So thought #20 is this -Let it all go. A small laugh isn’t worth carrying all the baggage from your past around, and it can even be dangerous. I have to admit, the chile is in the very back of the pantry as a reminder of how far we have all come. There is plenty of room for all the "new" and I hope we won’t be playing this game again in five or ten years.  My prayer is to let the past stay where it belongs.

Amen,

Audra