I'm Pretty Sure Goldilocks Could Give Me Some Good Advice

You know how I was going to straighten up my dark basement lair last night? Okay, not so much straighten up, as throw away those three Valentine candy boxes that were sitting on the slide-out shelf of my old gray office desk? You're not going to believe this...

Here they are. The three boxes. I wonder what Goldilocks would have to say, if she broke into the Mansion and started snooping around my dark basement lair?

"Look! Valentine candy boxes! This one is TOO PLAIN!"

"This one is TOO FANCY!"

"But this one is...OOHHH EEMMM GGEEE! THIS ONE IS FULL OF CANDY!"

That's right. I picked up the boxes to throw them away, and the top one was suspiciously heavy! Further investigation revealed that the box was unopened! It was full of candy! I'd been sitting in my office with a FULL BOX OF CANDY behind me! Sweet Gummi Mary! What is the world coming too? Here I was, making wise choices, and I didn't even eat my Valentine candy!

For two years. Look at the BEST BY date on this box:

Can you believe it? I'm pretty sure that box was from 2015. Otherwise the date wouldn't have been so close to that year's Valentine's Day. That's the year I started making wise choices at the beginning of February. And that's the year my mom died, in early February, and things were kind of in flux for a while. So it's easy to see how stuff like Valentine candy could fall by the wayside. Or at least be set on the pull-out shelf of my old gray office desk and overlooked.

FOR TWO YEARS!

Is that not a bigger dark basement lair faux pas than having a critter roaming around in the clutter, or having a tower of that clutter topple over unexplainedly? To leave CANDY, brand-name, Whitman's Sampler, fine CHOCOLATE candy UNEATEN for TWO YEARS?

I am not an expert on chocolate. I do know that when Farmer H and I, and the boys, used to take a vacation to Branson every year with my mom and dad, we would stop in Lebanon (Missouri!) at the Russell Stover candy outlet. And when we bought candy, it was always past the BEST BY date. That's what a candy outlet does, you know. Sells candy for cheap because it's past the date. I think they even had signs saying that the candy was perfectly edible, but that chocolate sometimes turns a whitish color when it's past the BEST BY date. Thought it's still perfectly edible! I don't even remember seeing a discoloration on the treats we bought.

Do you think it's safe to eat? You know, one piece every now and then? Once the Thanksgiving replacement cheesecake is gone?

Not gonna lie. I'm thinking about it. I don't think I'll die if I eat it. And I don't think I'll die if I don't. After all...I've been able to leave it untouched for two years...