Recently, in the dark and scary confines of my refrigerator, two very good ideas came together in a very bad way. The first good idea was putting your name on your food. Yes, I know that this is an idea that seems more suited to living in a college flop with seven under-employed dirtbag roommates than a single family living in a single family home, but trust me: if you had had to break up all the fights over who drank the last of “the Sunny D that I bought with my own money!” that I did, then you, too, would encourage people to write their names on the foods they hold dear. Of course, somehow this rule has morphed into “write your name on anything you want/think you deserve more than anyone else in the family.” In fact, I’m surprised that summertime doesn’t find names being written on the sides of ice cubes as soon as they come out of the trays. So, yeah, in the interest of minimizing conflict between people (well, sort of people: children), I decided that it would be a good idea for people to start writing their names on food.
The other good idea I had was that we should all try to reduce the amount of waste we generate in the kitchen, either the kind that gets recycled or the kind that gets thrown away. Which meant, in this case, making a brief foray into the world of reusable bottles. Specifically, reusable milk bottles. Even more specifically still, reusable mocha milk bottles.
And now we arrive at the conflict.
Milk is usually one of those foods that can belong to everyone. We either have plenty of it, or we have none. (Occasionally we have both at the same time. This happens when I have neglected to buy enough “good” cereal and the milk has gone bad from disuse, in which case while there is still plenty of “milk” in the fridge, there is no milk there that anyone wants to use. Of course, no one tells me that the milk has gone bad. They just leave it in there, letting me assume we still have plenty of milk, when actually we have none. Heaven forbid the person who discovers the bad milk should actually pour it out. Heck, even taking the time to write “BAD” on it would be enough for me. But, as usual, I digress.)
Anyway, here’s what happened: the other day I brought home a bottle of mocha milk, delicious chocolate coffee flavored milk that just so happens to also come in a reusable glass bottle. The idea is simple: you pay a deposit for the bottle, and when the bottle is empty you return it, get your deposit back, and buy a new bottle of milk. With luck the same bottle can be used hundreds, if not thousands, of times. Unless, of course, it is unlucky enough to come into my house, whereupon it will be immediately seized and claimed by a Sharpie wielding mocha milk fiend.
And not just claimed with a name, but also with dire threats of painful death to future milk thieves, including a specific request for a particular thief in question to perform an anatomical impossibility upon themselves.
Did I mention this was in Sharpie?
And that was how this poor bottle—a bottle that had probably been filled at least five hundred times—suddenly reached the end of its useful career. The permanent graffiti on its side meant that the chances of it ever being filled again and sold to a different family—a nice family—were now nil.
Right along with the chances of me ever being to shop in that store again—at least after I returned that particular bottle.