Out With The Old

(for Barbara, Darrell, and Dina)

There's a new syndrome listed in the DSM IV -- you might not have heard about it, but it affects many Baby Boomers and impacts younger family members significantly. It's called the Neglected Pantry Syndrome. It works something like this:

Many baby boomers store stuff. It is in their nature to store stuff. All sorts of stuff. Some stuff is books, some stuff is tools, some is clothing, some is food. Lots and lots of stuff. This storing (not to be confused with hoarding, another disease altogether) causes the next generation in the family to become apoplectic with anxiety that, should the aforementioned Baby Boomers unceremoniously depart the Earth without due notice, the younger generation will be consigned to rummage through this collection of stuff themselves. OMG! Imagine having to dispose of someone else's stuff. All those books, all those tools, all those clothes, all that crap in the pantry! MOTHER!

NPS (Neglected Pantry Syndrome) CAN be fatal if precautions are not taken.

Witness these two poor souls. First, because of their advanced age, they have no recourse but to turn to technology (the magnifying glass) so that they might see the date printed in the smallest of letters on cans and packages they have hived away. To their shock and horror, they discover that most of the contents of their pantry has expired. Imagine – Girl Scout Cookies from the same year as NASA’s MER Mars landings, and cans of tuna from before the invasion of Iraq (Mission Accomplished -- yeah, tell me another one).

THEY MIGHT HAVE DIED! Had these two old farts not taken precautions to ferret out the deadly pantry contents, why, they might have succumbed to TPP (Toxic Pantry Poisoning). Then the next generation would not only have had to dispose of their lifeless bodies, but they would also have then had to rifle through all the other stuff the old farts left behind. You know, the tools and papers and books and clothes and nicknacks and falderal and other flotsam and jetsam squirreled away.

So, Baby Boomers, do your offspring a favor. Before you buy the farm, kick the bucket, flatline, baste the formaldehyde turkey, become the Smorgasbord of decay, and hit the Stairway to Heaven, do the right thing. Toss those 8 year old cans of mushroom soup – you know – the ones with the buckling tops. Trash the 12 year old coffee. (Your kids don’t care if it’s hermetically sealed.) Deep-six freeze-dried anything, and throw out the hot dog relish that was canned before the Earth cooled.

Your children will thank you for it.

(Sadly, Boris approaches the empty pantry and thinks "We're gonna starve! They threw everything out.")