Leftovers in my house work like this: I cook dinner. Family eats dinner, excluding children, who demand second less tasty dish that involves pasta. I cook second crappy dinner because I’m too tired to fight with them. If I do the dishes, I toss any leftovers that I don’t deem to be a reasonable serving of food. I know I waste some perfectly good stuff that other people would love to have and eat. I’m American; I don’t own a gun so it’s how I contribute to our culture.

However if grandma does the dishes, or gets near the kitchen, it’s going in the archives. It can be 3 diced pieces of tomato and a sliver of onion. Doesn’t matter, that shit is getting saved. One small slice of beef? Two tablespoons of shredded cheese? Saved like a Pentecostal on Sunday. The food is lovingly sealed up in Tupperware and neatly stacked at the front of the fridge where it can be seen, so it will be eaten. In theory. By better people than us.

On each consecutive day, the little packages get scooted back a little by a hastily replaced jar of pickles, something that needs to hang out for an hour and marinade, or even more leftovers. Once it’s not easily seen by an adult standing in front of an open refrigerator, it may as well be on the moon, or in that warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

To her credit she does save a lot of things that are worth saving, but I’m the pessimistic guy who cleans the fridge and finds these little treasures. I think we all know what becomes of two tablespoons of cheese after a few weeks in food limbo.

And Tupperware? You can’t just throw that shit away. That needs to be scraped and sanitized. Tupperware ain’t cheap, and my aunt was a Tupperware lady, so we had the hookup;  I have the special VIP limited edition stuff. The BPA alone is worth its weight in gold.

This feels like some shitty 80’s early 90’s standup bit that begins with “ya ever notice???” Sorry audience. There are starving people in Africa that would love to have this joke.