Good riddance, 2020. You were the worst.
Bring on 2021, the year that promises a bold new world of face-touching and celebratory conga lines.
Every household will come equipped with a machine that recycles face masks into ball gags, because you just know we’ll be wildly overcompensating for isolation with massive swinger culture.
I am ready, 2021. Hit me with your brave new optimism of mildly tolerable living conditions and a U.S. president that makes me go “sure, ok, whatever.”
But give me some time to clean my fridge out first?
See, I have this problem with expiry dates whenever there’s a new year.
I’m one of those oddballs you see at the supermarket obsessively checking each and every item for the best-before date as if they were printed gospel from the mouth of Foodor, the god of packaged goods.
Yet my brain can’t wrap itself around the shift from 2020 to 2021.
It’s like a fault line forms in the thought process, and I find myself looking down at a family pack of charcuterie saying “2021! That’s a whole YEAR away!”
Intellectually, I know how meat works. I know that it’s not like the yogurt to cheese spectrum, which has a theoretical steady progression past the “sell by” date that remains safe for human consumption.
I know that the meat is going to be Not Ok with big capital letters in a week, not a year, and yet my grubby little mitts see that and think “this is fine,” like a meme dog in a cafe fire.
But in the name of Foodor, I must abide by the amazing clearance deal which definitely is not a red flag and is only a means to save me a few bucks.
I take the charcuterie, with its glowing 2021 expiry, home.
Days later, I enter into a deep philosophical conversation of regret with my toilet.
I pledge to myself that this year, for sure, I will remember that the flipping of a calendar does not slow the decay of tasty meat products.
It will be my 2022 resolution.
Welcome to Ford on Fridays: a weekly column where Victoria Buzz staff writer Tim Ford offers his thoughts on life, love, and the pursuit of the perfect joke.
This column is for comedic purposes only. Please feel free to send feedback, thoughts, and [constructive] criticisms to tim@victoriabuzz.com.
