SATIRE

This 13-Year-Old Bottle of Expired La Victoria Salsa Has Seen Way Worse Than This Pandemic

And that totally means something

I lie awake at night terrified that my older relatives and my friends with pre-existing conditions will become just another gruesome statistic in this growing once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.

But then I found an expired bottle of La Victoria salsa in the back of my fridge. And I realized that I’ve been listening to the advice of experts and doctors for absolutely no reason.

Because, if this expired bottle of La Victoria salsa from 2007 can make it through all of the terrible things that have happened in the past 13 years, then this deadly global pandemic doesn’t seem like such a big deal in comparison.

It’s called history. Look it up.

Have a Little Perspective, Gosh

Much like your grandparents, the early years of this expired bottle of La Victoria salsa were defined by upheaval and change.

When this bottle of La Victoria Thick N’ Chunky Salsa Verde came off the production line, George W. Bush was in his second term in the White House, and the iPhone hadn’t even launched yet.

Really makes you think how far we’ve come since then, huh. No iPhones? Wow. What a crazy world.

But before this expired bottle of La Victoria salsa had even spent a single year hidden way behind that crusty baking soda box on the top shelf, change was in the air.

Obama was elected as the nation’s first Black president, they were already making another totally different iPhone (wow), and the biggest global financial crisis in a generation loomed thanks to years of reckless unregulated subprime mortgage lending.

The passage of time is wild, right? Nothing is real and facts don’t matter.

Yes, My Salsa Can

Despite the social and economic upheaval of the Great Recession, my bottle of expired La Victoria salsa celebrated the sweeping progressive changes that happened during Obama’s administration.

• In 2010, universal healthcare, while far from perfect, became the law of the land just after the expired bottle of La Victoria salsa turned three. And everyone has been able to get affordable care ever since!
• Gay marriage was recognized by the highest court in the land in 2015 as my salsa turned eight, and again, zero issues on that front.
• …and America’s already brutal armed drone strike campaign escalated with 563 drone strikes during Obama’s two terms, keeping Americans safe while resulting in the deaths of between 384–807 civilians in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen.

What a world, huh?

And if that “margin of error” for civilian casualties seems inexcusably large—it’s because it is! It’s super weird that we don’t know if the hundreds of murder kite missions we ordered on foreign soil resulted in the “accidental” deaths of a few hundred civilians or a lot more than that. And we’ll never know!

Isn’t nostalgia fun? Who wants more salsa?!

Fake News, Real Mexican Taste

In 2012, the expired bottle of La Victoria salsa turned five while the world watched in mute horror as a gunman walked into a school and murdered 26 people—including 20 children between ages six and seven — in the deadly Sandy Hook massacre.

This is just one of the 180 school shootings that occurred in the U.S. between 2009 and 2019 with over 300 victims, mostly children.

Fun fact: Many right wing media outlets, including one of the most popular and influential conservative pundits with millions of listeners, claims that this grizzly mass murder never even happened! He says it’s a “false flag” attack aimed at limiting Second Amendment rights.

¡Muy caliente!

Also, in 2013, the word “selfie” was named Word of the Year by the Oxford Dictionary. That’s not as tragic as anything else on this list, but it’s still a low point worth mentioning.

Oh, and the Boston Marathon bombings happened in April 2013. I almost forget that one.

Isn’t this list of horrible events that my expired bottle of La Victoria salsa has technically been through helping put the current pandemic into perspective? See, you don’t have to worry about it anymore or take any personal responsibility for your actions.

History is so empowering!

Facts Don’t Matter with Taste This Bold

From 2014–2017, my expired bottle of salsa watched as the average American life expectancy dropped year after year for the first time in nearly a century.

Fun Fact: The last time U.S. life expectancy dropped was during the last global pandemic—the Spanish Flu of 1918! Neat-o!

In 2015, a reality TV star announced that he was running for president. His main qualifications were decades of public business failures, multiple bankruptcies, and hundreds of racists tweets about the president at the time.

Oh and he openly admitted—on camera—to sexual assault, extramarital affairs with porn stars, and tax evasion. Trump had also been sued over 3,500 times, mostly for fraud and breach of contract by people who worked for him.

And that was all the way back in 2016 when my bottle of expired La Victoria Thick N’ Chunky Salsa was just nine years old. Think of how much more gross they’ve both become since then!

Trump was, of course, easily elected to the Presidency of the United States despite losing the popular vote by nearly three million votes.

The expired bottle of La Victoria Thick N’ Chunky didn’t take part in the 2016 election, because it's an expired bottle of La Victoria Thick N’ Chunky salsa. But it’s also because many ethnic-sounding names were purged from the voter rolls.

Who wants some chips and dip?!

Nothing Is Real and Salsa Is My New God

The next few years kind of flew by, even though they chisel away at decades of progress, social norms, and the very roots of our democracy:

• On August 11th, 2017, hundreds of literal Nazis and other white nationalists (which are the same thing, right?) carried tiki torches and chanted, “You will not replace us!” at a Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.
• The very next day, Heather Heyer was murdered while peacefully protesting the rise of white nationalism in America by a white nationalist who drove his car into a crowd of people in Charlottesville. Our reality star president claimed there are “good people on both sides” of the rally/protest.
• In 2017, the United States withdrew from the Paris Agreement, one of the largest international efforts to curb the effects of manmade climate change on a global level — setting climate reform back years (if not decades).
• By the end of 2017, more than 70,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses — doubling from the 35,000 opioid deaths in 2007, the year my salsa originally expired.

Who wants fajitas!?

Societal Collapse? More Like Spring Break!

Skipping ahead brings us to 2019. The expired bottle of La Victoria Thick N’ Chunky salsa was about to become a teenager as:

• Student loan debt in the U.S. reached over $1.4 trillion dollars. Meaning: if they’re anything like me right now, most graduates are doubled over on the bathroom floor filled with regret as they curse the living God for the sweet release that never comes.
• Air pollution reached “unhealthy levels” for more than 141 million Americans, according to the American Lung Association’s 2019 State of the Air report. Other studies from the University of Chicago claim that pollution and poor air quality reduce life expectancy by an average of 1.8 years per person.

That’s only about 1/7th the lifespan of my salsa! Much like your grandparents, my expired bottle of La Victoria Thick N’ Chunky salsa has been through a lot worse than that!

• Later in 2019, Americans learned not to answer their phones as over 5 billion robocalls were placed in the month of October 2019 alone.

Sadly, few of these robocalls sold salsa.

2020 kicked off with record-breaking heat and months of severe drought that fueled uncontrollable wildfires across Australia. Over 27 million acres were destroyed and over a billion animals were killed in the wildfires.

Knock, Knock. Who’s There? It’s Me, Salsa! Not a Deadly Virus, Silly

And that about brings us up to date on everything that’s happened in the 13 years since the bottle of La Victoria Thick N’ Chunky salsa expired in 2007.

Oh yeah, there’s a once-in-a-century pandemic or whatever. No biggie. My salsa has seen worse, so I can completely ignore the “global health crisis” that “threatens every aspect of our economy and way of life” because this isn’t a big deal and nothing you say will ever convince me to care about other people.

I know my rights.

Sure, this current “global pandemic” might have already “infected millions of people,” and “killed over 140,000 Americans in just a few months” with “thousands more projected to die before we develop a vaccine,” but so what?

The global economy has been decimated, agriculture and supply chains are crumbling, isolation is gripping individuals all over the globe as income inequality, rising suicide rates, opioid deaths, and limited access to healthcare accelerate the mortality rate in vulnerable communities.

Who cares?

The expired bottle of La Victoria Thick N’ Chunky salsa in my fridge has technically been through an equally horrific, randomly connected string of events that I choose to interpret as a reason to ignore other information.

I choose to believe—and that’s my God-given right—that if my expired bottle of La Victoria Thick N’ Chunky salsa can make it through all of that, it means we’re going to be fine and I don’t have to change my behavior or listen to experts or “science” or “data” or wear a mask.

So what if a few million people might die? Big whoop. My expired bottle of La Victoria Thick N’ Chunky salsa is just fine, and will still be here long after you’re gone. And that’s all the science I need.

Shawn Forno is a freelance travel writer, blogger, content manager, and poet. He enjoys writing about himself in the third-person. This is his second satire piece ever.

Or is it? Gotcha, didn’t I?

You can check out his non-satire writing portfolio, sign up for his weekly newsletter, or read more of his travel articles for helpful tips and tricks for writers and travelers.