Vintage Bags of Fl'awful Chips

Sometime before February of last year a YMCA member donated 40 boxes of falafel chips to the East Valley YMCA. When I arrived the boxes were being used as back office clutter, though the obvious use should've been as cubicle dividers. The membership director began selling these chips for a dollar a bag until they expired in March, when they were marked down to "or best offer." I helped increase sales by sampling. The director was then told expired food could not be sold at the Y, so she began giving them away. The director was then told expired food could not be given away at the Y, so she gave them away discretely. Then the decision was made to throw all the boxes away. I ended up taking home 30 boxes, with 12 bags of falafel chips in each box.

I'll tell ya, I didn't like the taste of the chips. They were bland at first, and overpoweringly spicy at the final swallow. Though I was sure they'd taste pretty good with some hummus to cover up their taste. The sheer volume of chips was what interested me. By amount, this was the largest gross of food I'd ever pirated from a YMCA. I'm sorry, I wrote that wrong. I mean, the grossest large amount of food I've ever pirated from a YMCA. And while I knew I didn't want the chips at that point, I couldn't say whether or not I'd want them in a year, or say, a year and six months.

So I redid my room in fl'awful boxes. I made the shelf, a chest of drawers and a bedstead out of fl'awful boxes. I also ate many of the chips and forced them on others. I pioneered the fl'awful-chip-beef-jerky sandwich, a dish that has a combined expired age of 3 years, and is pretty much entirely sodium. Also, I moved a lot of product at home by sampling. Open up a bag, pour some chips on a plate at the kitchen table, done. Ooo! I should write an expired entree cookbook. That idea doesn't fit in this paragraph; I just thought it and typed it to remember.

I've brought at least one bag of expired fl'awful chips to each team meeting we've had at the YMCA since then. And we've had like 15 team meetings. My favorite idea to propose at a team meeting: "We should have another team meeting." Coworkers know that the chips are old, but someone else always eats the chips with me at these meetings. How do I do it? Easy. By sampling. I just take a paper plate or a napkin, pour some chips out onto it, and then start eating chips myself. The crunching and bag-rustling is too much for most anyone to deny.