A Visit With the Can of Sardines I Bought Because They’re Healthy

I’m going to put you over here with that box of chickpea pasta I bought in 2017

Hey, little buddy, how’s it going?

I know we haven’t seen each other in a while, but your “best buy” date is January 22, 2026, so this relationship still has some legs, even if you don’t.

Get it? Fish don’t have legs? Just a little piscine humor to lighten the mood.

No, I know you’re lonely. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to rub it in, although I am supposed to rub you on toast or something, I guess? Honestly, I don’t even know how to eat you.

I bought you more out of nostalgia than anything else. My dad loved sardines. He’d pop open a can and slap you on a saltine cracker and go to town.

No, I never asked him if I could have a bite. I was too busy freaking out.

It just seems wrong to eat something dead that looks almost exactly like it did when it was alive.

I have to admit that I like my food as ultra-high processed as it can possibly be. A hot dog and Twinkies are my idea of a perfect meal.

I want no reminders that the thing I’m eating ever had a heartbeat, or a soul, or children, or enjoyed the feel of the sun on the water and the taste of the tiny, juicy plankton that you ate, maybe? I have no idea what sardines eat, but you probably enjoyed eating it while you were alive.

See, you’re in mustard sauce! That’s what they do when they’re trying to sell something to people that nobody in their right mind would ever eat.

They put it in a sauce.

The sauce it meant to hide the flavor of the thing you’re actually eating, which in this case is a dead fish complete with scales and bones.

Literally the only thing missing is the head, and that’s probably only because it wouldn’t fit in the can.

I know, I know! You’re chock-full of healthy omega-whatsits and B vitamins, and if I eat you I will live forever, which isn’t actually that big of a selling point considering everything that’s going on in the world.

If I live too long, it’ll just be me and this can of sardines, Mad Max-ing our way across a sweltering hellscape as the climate implodes.

In that future, people will kill for a can of sardines. This can of sardines will be worth its weight in gold.

I shouldn’t open it and actually eat it — I should keep it with all of the other canned goods I’m squirrelling away for an emergency.

So this isn’t good-bye, little buddy, it’s “See you later!” I’m just going to tuck you next to this box of chickpea pasta I bought in 2017 when I thought I had a gluten allergy, right behind the can of cranberry sauce my mom bought in the early 2000s.

Sweet dreams!

---