How important are expiration dates to you?  They’re intended to protect consumers from health risks, but also maintain quality of the product.  I almost think that not following dates becomes more wasteful of your time since you’re constantly evaluating the quality or the “edible level” rather than just drawing the line and moving on.  Efficiency of the use of your time or even protecting your own health comes in to play.  Is the risk of being and feeling sick worth the ~$1.60 of salad dressing left in the bottle?  I bet if you got sick, you’d be willing to pay more money to feel instantly better.  There a science in the decision making process we could get into, but I’ll just ask the question.

I’ve told this story to only a few people.  You might be a little grossed out, but it’s pretty funny.

Sometime when I was in college, my cousin, Adam, invited me to take a trip to Cedar Point with a bunch of his friends.  We met up at like 6 am and drove out to the park.  I was just getting over a bit of a cold, but it wasn’t all that bad, just needed to blow my nose every few hours or so.  We got in line for the Mantis, which is one of the better rides in the park.  The line was unusually long, but it was definitely worth the wait.  If you’re familiar with the ride, it does this fantastic set of 3 inverted loops for the finale.  The G force is so intense and that fact that you’re standing up makes it completely different from anything you’ve felt before.

What made this ride so memorable was what happened during those loops.  Standing in line for so long, sniffing my snot, didn’t seem like that much of a worry.  As soon as I hit those loops though, my nasal passages had nothing of a fight against gravity.  Snot went everywhere.  It was along the sides of my face, on my shoulder, and by the screams of “EWWWWWW!!!” behind me (I was in the front), I’m pretty sure some people got a present as well.  The fortunate thing (for me, at least) is that you do those loops on top of a body of water, so it’s not uncommon to get hit with some moisture.  I don’t think anyone knew what happened, until I told Adam, much much later.