To Keep or Not to Keep

The other day, I broke out a bag of tortilla chips so that I could enjoy some leftover guacamole. Unfortunately, when I glanced in the bag, I was greeted with a most unwelcome sight: the full-size, dippable chips were gone, leaving behind a bleak layer of crumbs and chip fragments. Pieces that size are not big enough for dipping. You have to grab about ten at a time to get the essence of eating an actual chip, and there's no way of gracefully dipping them unless you submerge your fingers in the dip – an offense that's surely on par with double-dipping.

I'm always torn in situations like this, and I find myself having to make a tough decision. Part of me insists on finishing the bag. After all, it's still food, and I grew up with a mother who constantly decried wasting food by reminding me of all the starving kids in Africa. However, the other part of me knows that even those kids in Africa would look at the near-empty bag and say, "eh – not worth it."

It's especially frustrating when I know there's an unopened bag sitting in the pantry, filled with fresh, whole chips that lure me like a siren, ready to be dipped and enjoyed with reckless abandon. Why do I have to suffer the indignity of shoving handfuls of broken chips in my mouth or, to be even classier, pouring them down my throat directly from the bag?

This keep-or-toss dilemma is certainly not limited to just tortilla chips. It also applies to jarred condiments such as peanut butter or jelly. You always get to a point at which the jar is practically empty, but there's still just enough left clinging to the sides. You wind up scraping and digging, accumulating bit by bit, as if it were a precious commodity worth millions. Meanwhile, there's a back-up jar in the pantry that you can just dip your spoon in and scoop out heaps from with no effort.

Worse are the condiments that come in squeeze containers, such as ketchup (or catsup for people who insist on spelling it in a way that makes no sense whatsoever). For a while, you can squeeze stuff out in long streams. But as you reach the end of the container, it always comes out in short bursts, spraying blotches all over your food so that it resembles a crime scene. Why risk the explosion, which inevitably splatters ketchup on your clothes, confirming you as suspect number one?

Non-food items are also up for debate at times. Soap dispensers are particularly bothersome. The tube inside is never long enough to get all the soap out. Instead, you wind up with a small pool at the bottom. You keep pushing the pump over and over, willing the soap to jump up into the tube so you can get just one small drop, which is barely enough to create lather. Of course, you could always take the pump off and pour the remaining soap out, but that kind of defeats the purpose of having a pump in the first place.

Toothpaste is probably the worst offender. Trying to get the last drops of toothpaste involves a complex system of rolling, pushing, squeezing, twisting, turning, and – occasionally – crying. The easy solution is to just throw the near-empty tube away and break open a new tube that will give you all the toothpaste you need with barely a squeeze. But think of all those starving kids in Africa.

As for the tortilla chips, I wound up rooting through the bag to find the biggest chips that were left and getting as much guacamole as I could on each one – which was pretty much nothing. Then, so as not to waste food, I wound up eating approximately five pounds of chip shards. My mother would be so proud. My doctor... probably not as much.

Excelsior

The United States is like a big family of fifty children, all different shapes and sizes, each one having its own unique voice and personality. And as in any family with fifty children (an anxiety-inducing thought for most parents), the states often have to vie for attention and create their own identity to stand out. One way they do this is by devising a set of representative objects and symbols.

For instance, each state has its own official song. Some have opted for self-congratulatory odes such as California's not-so-subtle “I Love You, California.” (Sample lyric: “I love you California, you're the greatest state of all.” How modest.) On the other end of the spectrum is Idaho, whose state song is titled “Here We Have Idaho,” which is pretty much how you'd expect Idaho to be introduced as you pass by it on a bus tour.

Each state also has its own motto – a kind of catchphrase that sums up its spirit and motivation. Some are merely random words collected from a game of patriotic buzzword Bingo, such as Delaware's “Liberty and Independence” and Vermont's “Freedom and Unity.” Others are colorful phrases that make for great license plates, like New Hampshire's incomparable “Live Free or Die.” Then there's New Mexico's enigmatic “Crescit Eundo,” which is Latin for “It Grows as it Goes.” I'm just going to leave that one alone.

States have other common symbols of identity, such as a state nickname and a state flag. However, some states have taken the concept to great heights of absurdity. Consider Florida, which, like many other states, has designated an official state animal: the Florida panther (the cat, not the football player). However, one animal clearly couldn't shoulder the responsibility of representing a state all by itself. So Florida also designated an official state marine mammal, saltwater mammal, freshwater fish, saltwater fish, reptile, saltwater reptile, bird, butterfly, and tortoise. You know you've gone too far when you have to create a whole “state tortoise” category because you already have an official “saltwater reptile.”

While Florida is busy giving every animal in the state its own official status (I believe the round-tailed muskrat is campaigning for official state rodent), other states are representing themselves symbolically through food. Idaho has the potato as its state vegetable and Wisconsin has milk as its state beverage. Both choices seem reasonable, if not a tad obvious. It would be so much more original if they came up with something wacky like an official state muffin.

Then again, it wouldn't be so original, since three states – Massachusetts, Minnesota, and New York – have already declared state muffins. Keep in mind, like all other state symbols, these muffins were not merely appointed by some random muffin spokesperson. They are officially recognized through legislation that has passed through the state's governing bodies. To be fair, each of these states had particularly persuasive muffin lobbyists in the form of schoolchildren. Their convincing arguments won over politicians swiftly, which makes you wonder if we could get more bills passed through Congress by having them drafted and endorsed by third-graders.

However, Oklahoma didn't need schoolchildren to put all other states to shame in the official food department. Its legislators drafted an entire official state meal consisting of cornbread, biscuits, grits, fried okra, squash, corn, black-eyed peas, barbecue pork, sausage and gravy, chicken fried steak, pecan pie, and strawberries. I had to take an antacid just typing that sentence. I'm pretty sure each order comes with a free trip to one of Oklahoma’s official state cardiac centers.

So what's the point of it all? Do we really get a better idea of what Texas is like knowing its official state molecule is the Buckyball? Does having an official state silverware pattern really give Kentuckians a little extra pride in their state? Do Kentuckians even know they have an official state silverware pattern? Perhaps legislators can designate that as the official state question.