If you put NyQuil, Pepto-Bismol and a tube of pain cream down on the drugstore counter, and it's 9:45 on a Friday night, you know what the clerk will say: "How's it going."
You want to just wave at the items you put down and say, "Draw your own conclusions."
As it happened, I did not need NyQuil, but I knew we would. I'd performed triage on the medicine cabinet, and the NyQuil was expired. Now, you might think that with all the alcohol, it's probably better with age. Maybe an expert would take a sip and say, "Ah, the 2014 vintage." But they put those expirations on there for a reason: to make you buy more because you think the stuff turned to poison overnight.
The Pepto-Bismol, handy for those days when you apparently ate a live piranha by mistake, was also out. The drugstore had regular-strength and maximum-strength, which always makes you wonder who doesn't want maximum-strength. "I feel horrible! But I'm fine with a partial abatement of discomfort."
It's not as if your body builds up a tolerance. Don't keep chugging that maximum-strength — save it for dysentery!
Thanks, I'll risk it.
Why, you ask, am I telling you about this? You'll see.
I was at this store because the first drugstore I'd visited was … creepy. Unsettling. Usually there's someone behind the counter who says some rote phonemes when you walk in, and you nod and head back to find what you need. There's always a moment of self-satisfaction: "Nope, don't need that. Nossir, regular as the light rail. Vitamins? Calcium supplements? Take the whole jar, you'd pass a shinbone. No, I'm fine, except for this specific complaint I can masquerade with some unguent.