Uh Oh, You've Expired!

I keep a spare toothbrush and toothpaste at work in my desk drawer for nights when I’m going out straight from work. The thought of going anywhere with foul breath, dirty teeth, or, um, an unclean tongue just makes me uneasy.

I was brushing my teeth at work the other day and thought to myself, my, this toothpaste tastes a bit funky. Now, it is a different brand than I use at home so my initial thought was that it’s simply different tasting. Then I remembered that I have thought this before and, the more I thought about it, it kind of seemed like the taste of the toothpaste was perhaps getting stronger.

Does toothpaste have something like an expiration date? I wasn’t really sure. I started checking out the tube while I was still brushing and, sure enough, toothpaste DOES have an expiration date. The date was almost exactly a year earlier.

Oh…

Now, I can’t say for sure that that accounts for the funky taste but, well, it’s certainly suspicious. This, my friends, is a phenomenon that I’ve just recently really started to encounter quite often. Yes, that’s right, I’ve reached that point in life where I’m old enough that time passes by very quickly and therefore expiration dates come and go, and yet I unknowingly keep using the product. It’s kind of embarrassing, really.

For example, a few months ago (or was it years ago? See what I mean?), we decided to go through the lazy susan and search for products that might have expired. I can’t recall what it was that prompted this (of course) but the outcome was shocking. We found multiple spices that had an expiration date of 2007 or slightly before! Some of these items I would have sworn that I had just purchased only a few months prior.

How does this happen? Where does the time actually go? And, most importantly, why is it going so fast?!

It’s kind of funny but also rather scary. Time moves so quickly these days that I’m almost afraid to go to sleep, terrified that I’ll wake up and be 80 years old with no recollection of the forty years that have passed.

I’m curious – are any of you experiencing this sort of thing? If you are, and if you can remember to remember, tell me about it! I’ll be interested to hear anyone’s theories on this strange mystery of life. The only theory I can ever come up with is that the more time we live through the less we seem to “feel” it pass us by since we become sort of immune to it. This alone is a rather frightening thought. Having said that, heck, I need to get off my rear end and go get something accomplished before it’s too late!