Ah, Youth! or "Alright, hard head."

Well- I got my eyes LASIK'ed back in late January, so my computer time has been limited. For those of you who haven't had the procedure, they put you in a room the temp of a restaurant refrigerator and immobilize your head so that you're looking up into the maw of the Mother Ship, with its psychedelic lightshow. Then the lasers go brzzzzt, brzzzt and you go home to put various drops and gels in your eyes for weeks.
Close-up vision is great, distance vision is taking a while to clear, as my correction for that was hewge. I'm getting re-acquainted with the face I haven't seen clearly from a distance in twenty years.
A glasses-less Mimi disturbed the babies for a while, but not long.

So...I volunteered at the Boy Scout Food Drive and took charge of the glass table. We pack all that separately, due to breakage. Now, one of the things most often packed in glass is condiments and condiments sometimes live in the depths of the pantry for years. And years. Until the B.S.A. drive comes along and they get sent to us.

In addition to the Scouts, we had a church youth group doing their Saturday shift, so they came along to help as well. Two of them were assigned to me and did a great job- until their curiosity got the better of them.

A scout brought three small dusty jars of something dark brown solidified into a gelatinous mass in some oily dark brown liquid to our table.

"What's that?" my helpers (let's call them A and B) asked, fascinated by their horribleness.

"I have no idea."

"Ooooh, let's open one!" said A.

"Yeah!" said B.

"Is the label in English?" I asked. It wasn't. In fact, there weren't any labels, only some writing around the rim of the lids.

"Can you even read the alphabet That's written in?" No.

"Look, I've been working here a long time and if the jar is obviously ancient and everything on it is in an unknown alphabet, DON"T OPEN IT."

(Yes, that sounds xenophobic. But if you can read on the faded cutesy-country label that it's a jar of Aunt Sue-Ellen's Chow-Chow, you have at least some idea of what you're dealing with. Otherwise, you don't.)

"Oh, please let us open it! Please!"

"Okay, but take it into the restroom."

They return a few minutes later, pale and abashed.

"Well?"

"OMG- it was horrible! We both nearly barfed!" said A.

"It was so gross- I've never seen anything like it." said B.

"Can we throw it away now?"

"YES! YES!"

Well, alright, hard heads.