Yesterday, I reached into my pants for my car keys and got a not-so-pleasant surprise when I discovered that the pocket had been transformed into a vat of sticky goo. First I thought my small travel bottle of Purel had busted open, until I remembered that the santizer was in my other pocket. So I reached back in and pulled out my keys. They were a sticky, drippy mess.

Then I excavated a tube of glucose gel that I bought at a convenience store – the one that sounds like “skeevy yes,” not that there’s anything wrong with sounding like “skeevy yes.” I had never opened it, but it somehow had not been sealed properly at its flat, non-cap end. At least half of the sugary gel had oozed out and made a total, thorough mess of my clothes, keys, and hand.

At $11.49 a pack, I’d think we were beyond this already. After all, clipped to my belt is a little, blue, medical miracle that does its own math and administers insulin accurately in increments as small as half a tenth of a unit. Six inches lower, technology can’t keep from turning my clean, dry pants into a baker’s piping bag. Soon, the gel was seeping through the fabric, forming a noticeable sweet spot, if you will, on the outside of my pants. I envisioned another diabetic walking by. “You’re a pumper!?!” Then, seeing the ugly spot, “and you carry gel, too.”

NancyTW (The Wife, not to be confused with The Sister, NancyTS,) has taught me that to avoid being disappointed, I should keep my expectations low. Thus, while such an event would once have gotten the better of me, I am now totally down with my pocket goop experience, and also with using my one remaining goop-free hand to steer all the way to Wal-Mart, where, incidentally, glucose gels are less than ten bucks a pack.