Another item for the Year of Medusa alternative holiday letter

In mid-September as the air became chill-tinged, as pinpoints of burnished gold and scarlet began to appear in the trees, and I was cleaning out my underwear drawer, I found six packaged condoms that had expired in February of 2004. I ask you: is there anything sadder than an expired condom? Granted, they were of the extra-large variety and we all know those never get used as quickly as your standard sizes. Still, those small bulky silver packages in my hands led to a bittersweet contemplation of six lost opportunities, a sigh of regret for each moment of unquenched passion, and a brief searching meditation on who exactly I might have been sleeping with around the dawn of the new millennium that inspired such a purchase. Ahhh. . . the mixture of melancholy and delight in such memories!