Nobody Puts Honey Bun in the Corner!

I think my older brother has some issues with authority. He’s been fired twice for disobeying a supervisor and he mouths off to every police officer he meets (which made his elementary school D.A.R.E. program pretty interesting). The problem isn’t so much the people in charge, but the fact that someone is telling him what to do. And it doesn’t even have to be someone, it’s even when it’s something. He refuses to buckle up in the car if it has one of those seatbelt warning tones. I guess he thinks that the car shouldn’t be bossing him around like that.

I don’t necessarily believe in karma, because I believe that "time and chance happen to everyone." But I do appreciate appropriate irony and well-deserved comeuppance. My brother has annoyed me for years with his constant defiance. It always reflects poorly on me when he yells at restaurant managers for enforcing the "no shoes, no shirt, no service" rule on him. So when the authority issue finally came back to bite him, I felt nicely vindicated.

My brother is a big guy, like me. And he likes his share of snacky foods and sweet treats. He went to the vending machine at the office where we both worked to get his regularly-scheduled Kit Kat one afternoon. And someone had put a post-it note on the machine:

"The Honey Bun in this machine is VERY expired.
DO NOT EAT!
-Ali-"

Most people would use common sense and avoid the offending Honey Bun. But not my brother. He took offense to the fact that some unknown coworker was essentially ordering him around. So naturally, he bought the Honey Bun and ate it with his customary Kit Kat. And that’s the day that we both learned how important expiration dates are. As bad for your health as a fresh Honey Bun already is (85% of your daily fat allowance is bad, right?), an expired one is far worse. My brother had to go home early that day and missed three days of work. I think he even considered going to the ER to get treated for his intense stomach pain, but he probably couldn’t bring himself to let a doctor tell him what to do.