Sour Milk

The best conversations I've been having recently are had with Annia. After a full year and a half of being in different cities, we clicked again over the demise of our relationships (although she's doing a good job of keeping hers intact long after the ruin of mine) and the stupid obliviousness of most boys. We're teaching each other to stick up for ourselves, to say and believe in what we think and have the strength to proclaim, You can't put sour milk back in the fridge. You just can't, because then someone won't know about it and they'll ingest it and get sick right there on your kitchen floor.

It's a cute little metaphor that only applies sometimes, because as we all know, there are always exceptions to the rule. Like one time last week, Annia actually had old milk with her cereal and she was fine. And I refuted the statement that you should just throw the damn sour milk out with the idea that with some time, sour milk can become yogurt. Or cheese if you wait long enough.

But just how long are we expected to wait? While you go on with your days waiting for that milk to become something else, something useful and edible again, you're going to have a nasty smell coming out of the fridge. Every time you open it to get something to eat you'll smell it and get sick. You'll lose your appetite. The putridness of it will seep out of there and invade your kitchen, your living room, your clothes and you will reek of someone who is trying to turn sour milk into yogurt or cheese.

And now everyone knows. They know you as the weird person who keeps bad milk and for some reason no one can fathom, you can't throw it out. But it'll become yogurt one day, or cheese! you say. They look at you funny and you start to think, Maybe sour milk is just that, sour milk. And maybe one day it will become something good again, but I don't have that kind of technology or that much patience. You realize that you once had fresh milk that did your body good and you might have yogurt or cheese one day, but right now, all you've got is really smelly sour milk. And do you really want to eat homemade yogurt or cheese made from milk that just sits there for long enough?

One day, you finally break the cycle of opening your fridge, smelling the bad milk and throwing up by opening it one last time, throwing up one last time, and chucking the damn thing into the garbage.

Really, what's the point? You smell bad, you keep throwing up and people think you're crazy. And all for what? To prove to yourself that you can make yogurt or cheese (that'll probably just make you sick anyway)? Honestly, you can buy that stuff at the grocery store. There's a near unlimited supply and it's what normal people do. Not everyone can make yogurt or cheese. So the next time the milk expires, Annia and I say: Throw it the fuck out and move on because nothing good will come of keeping it.
1:38 pm