Sam Venable  

Special Contributor

Here it is February, and I still haven’t broken any of my New Year’s resolutions for 2015. Amazing!

(Uh, hmm. Come to think of it, I didn’t make any New Year’s resolutions for 2015. Or 2014 or 2013, for that matter. But why fret over minor details?)

I am, however, going to get the jump on 2015. Even though 11 months remain before we welcome the next new year, I hereby resolve to finish my box of raisins before the expiration date comes due.

I’ve got plenty of time to work on the matter. A label on the top of the box says my raisins must be used by November, 13, 2015. It’s a big box, but even if I eat only one or two raisins daily, I’ll surely have all of them consumed by then.

I happened to notice the expiration date a few days ago when I dug the raisins out of the refrigerator and sprinkled some on my oatmeal.

“Huh?” I thought to myself. “Do raisins go bad? I always figured they were more or less ageless, like peppermints in the bottom of the candy dish at Aunt Prunella’s house.”

Assuming raisins do have a finite existence, though, why such a precise date for their demise?

An expiration label simply stating, “It’s probably best to have these things eaten by early fall of next year,” would make a lot more sense—although all that verbiage would take up a lot of space on the top of the box.

Talk about confusion! Does this mean on November 12, 2015, I can eat these raisins with reckless abandon and suffer no ill effects, but if I wait two more days before nibbling I will keel over deader than Kelsey’s mule?

Will my raisins sit in the box, all plump and sweet, until midnight on November 13, 2015, and then — zap! — turn into dried-up mouse poop? And if I do eat them sometime after November, 13, 2015, and croak, will my death be ruled suicide or accidental?

The whole business of expiration dates on food products baffles me. I never know how much faith to put in them.

Let’s say I decide to eat a bowl of cereal before going to bed. I reach into the cupboard, pull out a box of Sugar-Coated Zippy Flakes and start to pour them into a bowl. Then I happen to notice the expiration date passed two weeks ago.

Are my Sugar-Coated Zippy Flakes too stale to eat now? Is it just my imagination, or have they gotten mushy? Or are they just as crisp as the day I brought them home?

And what about the milk I just started to pour? According to the expiration date, it went sour 24 hours ago. Even if it passes the sniff test, does this mean it still might be infected with jillions of newly hatched bacteria and other cooties that will make me spit up at 3 o’clock in the morning? Inquiring minds want to know.

Yikes!

I just glanced ahead on my 2015 calendar and looked up November 13. It’s a Friday. Any Friday the 13th is a bad omen in and of itself. But when you consider this date follows oh-so-close to Halloween, it surely has sinister overtones.

Maybe I’ll start eating 10 raisins a day, just to make double-dog certain they’re gone in plenty of time.

Sam Venable is an author, stand-up comedian, and humor columnist for the Knoxville (TN) News Sentinel. He may be reached at mahv@outlook.com .