DAY 363: STOP STEALING THE SWEET'N LOW

     Have you ever been to an early bird dinner in Florida?  I have, when I used to visit my grandparents.    Dinner could start as early as 4pm.  Seriously.  I don't know what happens when you reach grandparent age.  Maybe you think there'll be a food shortage and that you'll need something to make it through that really long red light or maybe you don't want to spend money on staples like sugar and other artificial sweeteners.  Whatever happens, elderly people get weird about food.  So they start stealing it.  

     Exhibit A: all the Sweet'N Low, Equal and sugar packets would disappear during early big dinners--and people weren't drinking that much iced tea or coffee.  Entire sugar bowls were left empty.  Cute grandma and grandpa were stealing the Sweet'N Low...just in case they needed those packets later on.  Or possibly because they didn't want to go out and buy their own Sweet'N Low.  

     Anyway, restaurants in Florida, at least in my grandparents' town, caught on and stopped putting out the sugar and sweetener packets.  If you wanted to sweeten your drink you had to request one or two or 100 from your waiter.  I think I saw some in my grandma's pocketbook one time.  They were wrapped, a/k/a hidden, in a tissue.  That's nice.  What was she planning on doing with them?  Beats me.