Snacks, lies, and videotape

I really wouldn't consider myself any kind of snack snob. I've made jokes that the people in my office will eat anything if you put it in the kitchen and announce it as a free treat, but really I'm no better than the rest of those scavengers. I know I have seen things in the kitchen at work that, if left in my own home, would go untouched indefinitely and yet, at work, due either to boredom or to actual hunger with few alternate options, I'll eat without question or second thought.

Still, I firmly feel that if you're going to send out an e-mail announcing that you've left snacks in the kitchen to which everyone should help themselves, those snacks should not include the packets of Saltines that probably came with your chili at Wendy's. There's a distinct difference between bringing in a legitimate snack to share and trying to pawn off the items you discovered while cleaning out your desk. It's strange to me that these two scenarios should actually ever be confused and yet today, somehow, it seems they were.

Thinking about snacks made me think about my visit to my parents' house for Thanksgiving last weekend. In recent years, my sister and I have made a little travel game out of guessing what food item my father will offer us first upon our return to their house. Our usual (and safest) guesses are pizza or Kentucky Fried Chicken, because the man pretty much always has pizza and Kentucky Friend Chicken in at least one of the four refrigerators in their house. (I could write an entire entry on why they have four refrigerators and what's stored in each one, but right now, I'm talking just about snacks.) I'm not sure if my father always has pizza and KFC on hand or if he buys it deliberately before our visits because he thinks it's some special treat we've been deprived of while away and we'll be excited by the chance to eat day-old (or older) reheated fast food. I know that he means well, so I try not to question.

It's odd to me, though, that he even feels the need to specifically offer or point out anything to eat in their house. Even if I don't live there anymore, I don't think I'll ever feel uncomfortable or out of place digging through the cupboards and refrigerator in the house I grew up in and helping myself to anything I find. I really don't need a host or guide to direct me where to find the leftovers. I know, though, that my father probably feels he has little to talk about with me, and I know that him offering me a run-down of what he's got on hand is his way of reaching out and breaking the ice and welcoming me back home. So I humor him and I eat a biscuit and everyone's content.

I've recently realized, however, that my father's menu recitation actually serves another, unintentional purpose beyond the general welcome, and that's to help me determine what's safest to eat. The things that he specifically offers are the things freshest in his mind, which means they're probably the things freshest in the house as well. Knowing how neither of my parents seems able to throw away any of the food that they for some reason buy and then ignore, this is invaluable information.

I don't know why it's so difficult for my parents to keep their food inventory under control. The fact that they buy food they apparently have no intention of eating is confusing enough to my usually frugal self. That they can let that food sit in their fridge or cupboard for weeks, months, yes even YEARS beyond its expiration date without noticing is even more inexplicably baffling. Last weekend I foolishly ate from a bag of honey mustard pretzels I found in their cupboard without checking the date first. I assumed that since the bag was unopened when I found it, the contents would be fresh and crunchy. When I realized they were stale with a slightly "off" flavor, I checked the date stamped on the bag only to see they were "Best before September 2003."

Both of my parents are pack rats (a trait I'm not too happy to have inherited to some degree myself), so maybe the hoarding of bad food is just an extension of that. When I try to purge them of their bad habits by cleaning out their cupboards and fridge, though, I get the same type of resistance I've seen from the homeowners on those "Clean Sweep" shows on TLC. My mother is only slightly more rational than my father in this situation: she actually encouraged me to continue my cleanup as long as I didn't throw the flotsam and jetsam in their household garbage bins. Instead, she suggested I load it all in a bag to take with me from their home (presumably so my father wouldn't get mad that anyone had thrown away what he might deem perfectly good food). I called her an enabler and ended the cleanup. Clearly my father is of the same school of thought as my ex-boyfriend, who insisted that expiration dates were merely suggestions printed by companies to avoid law suits. That may be true for certain foods and up to a certain date, but even Twinkies have a limit on their window of edibility.

I think my father's strange hoarding of snack foods is actually a compulsive behavior that he somehow can't control. Some sort of addiction therapy may be necessary to break him of the snack-buying habit. In lieu of any other significant hobbies, he's taken to collecting off-brand chips and discount candies at Dollar General and Big Lots. It doesn't matter what he already has in the cupboard at home; if he sees Reese's Swoops two for a dollar, he just can't leave them on the shelf.

Snack shopping has, it seems, replaced another long-held addiction that none of us could understand. For years, my father compulsively bought videotapes. Any videotapes. Full-price, sale-price, discount bin--the budget and content was utterly unimportant, apparently. It got to a point where my mother would not leave him unattended at Shopko or Wal-Mart, because he would inevitably return to her with a handful of videos he decided he needed to own. My mother bought no fewer than three floor-to-ceiling bookcases to hold his video collection, and the tapes still need to be stacked two deep with additional overflow balancing atop each row. Some are movies he saw once and liked. Others are movies he never saw and probably never needs to. Still others are documentaries, "making of" specials, NASCAR programs, pro-Republican conspiracy theory propaganda, and travel and tourism films. The video library in my parents' house would likely be a treasure trove for the Mystery Science Theater staff if that show were still in production today.

In the past few years, my father's video obsession seems to have finally subsided. Perhaps he's capable of only one addiction at a time, and the snack pack ratting has simply taken over. I'm not sure which is better or worse. On one hand, snacks are generally cheaper than videos, so he's not spending as much of my inheritance anymore. On the other hand, videos are undoubtedly less detrimental to a diabetic 60-something-year-old man's health than fatty snacks (particularly expired ones) are. So I suppose it is a toss-up.

I realize I have my own share of unusual quirks and obsessions, so I really shouldn't poke fun. For now, however, I'm just glad that lip balm is, I think, the most severe of my addictions, and I'm holding out hope that the pack rack gene is mostly recessive in my case.