Bob and Penny took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago and he was 59 and she was 51.

Now they live in Punta, Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30-foot trawler, place off ball, and collect shells.

That's a tragedy and there are people in this country that are spending billions of dollars to get you to buy it.

The American Dream, a nice house, a nice car, a nice job, a nice family, a nice retirement, collecting shells.

As the last chapter before you stand before the creator of the universe to give an account with what you did, here it is, Lord, my shell collection.

And look at my boat. Look at my boat, God.

So over the holidays, we were doing the holiday thing, we were at home one night, and I don't know what hit me, but it was the wrong time apparently, but I decided to clean out our pantry.

And I don't know how that works at your house. Shelley was like, okay, maybe you started because I don't know if I couldn't put the paper towels in there or something.

I was like, okay, this shelf has got to get reorganized right now. And so that was fine, but then that shelf, I'm compulsive, so that went to the second shelf and the third shelf, and then we're going to go to all the shelves, and then we're going to take everything out.

We're going to wipe down all the crumbs that have ended up in the bottom and the residue from the broom that hangs on the back of the door to the pantry.

And it just turned into the most amazing evening because this kind of stuff fires me up.

Are there anybody in the house with me on that? Anybody, when I say that, you're like, don't talk about the pantry. I don't want to think about it right now.

Try to keep those doors closed. So what we have a drawer in there that has the canned goods on it. And in our house, based on your diet, you have a certain palette of canned goods, and there we have about nine different things on the canned good drawer, and there's a lot of soup in there.

We don't eat a lot of soup, but we have a lot of soup because everyone has a lot of soup. Just in the event that there's, you know, some sort of a cosmic event, and you need to go down to basement, you always have some soup, or if you're not feeling well, so we typically have chicken noodle soup and tomato soup at our house, and that's it.

So I'm looking through the soup, but all looks good, looks fine. But then I had this thought because I honestly didn't know, and you're going to think, great, this is something you should have known.

I thought soup was like pretty much durable from now to whenever. I just assume if it's soup in a can, it's been pasteurized, and it's okay. But I thought maybe I should look and just see if that's the case or not. So I started turning the cans over, and low in the whole soup has an expiration date.

Did you know that already? So you might want to check when you get home. So I'm pulling all the soup out. I have it all on the kitchen counter, and I started looking at the bottom of all these cans, and it was a mixed bag of a decades worth of soup history in that deal. No kidding.

So I got one can of chicken noodle soup, expires September the 14th 2009. Okay, here's what it means about that. That can has lived in two pantries, two different houses, two different addresses, and is still in the pantry.

So in the can, it goes with a lot of other cans, unfortunately, that were way past their expiration date. And you know, I mean, you will eat stuff that's a month past the expiration date, or maybe a year depending on how desperate you are. But 2009, we're not eating that. So it's in the can. And I'm thinking these wonderful people, they made this soup. They went to great lengths to put good quality in the can. They canned the soup, they labeled it well. They got it to a store near my house.

We bought it, brought it home, but now it's just a waste is what that can is. It's in the trash, never having been open, never having been used. It may have brought some cheer on a gloomy day, or perk someone up who had had a nasty cold, but now it's just going to go in the bin, and then out to the street, and in the dumpster, and wherever trash goes in Atlanta, Georgia, that can of soup is residing right now.

Never having reached the potential that it was designed for. And here's what's amazing about that. All of our lives have an expiration date on them.

And so just like the meat in the refrigerator right now, just like the fruit, it's in the bowl on the counter, just like the cake maybe that you have in the cake stand in the kitchen, all of us have an expiration date.

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