Moo

#343 Moooo

Ever try to bust up one of those plastic milk bottles? Can't be done. You need an H-bomb and a platoon of jackhammers and even then, it's iffy.

They could fix all the decaying bridges by propping them up with these things. They could build escape-proof jails out of this stuff. You can bury one in a landfill and come back 60-million years later and still be able to read the label. If Detroit built cars out of this stuff, they'd put the entire auto body repair industry out of business overnight.

And of the seven trillion of these things manufactured since the dawn of the Plastic Age, none has ever leaked. Until now.

And when it leaked, it leaked big time, first filling the plastic grocery bag in which it was wrapped, then the trunk of the car in which the bag was placed and finally the street below (trunks may be water proof, but they're not milk proof.)

Fortunately this happened in the parking lot of the supermarket. The same parking lot where that guy (Wessay #349, "The Flashback") was caught whistling "Jingle Bells" well after Christmas. Fortunately, because a squadron of customer service women came out to help clean up the mess.

That wasn't the plan. The plan was to buy a half gallon of milk and put it in the refrigerator. But when both the container and the bag started leaking, then trailing milk in on the pavement and all the way back into the store and then onto the customer service counter, the ladies came out with their bottles of Windex and their cleaning cloths and paper towels, back tracking all the way to the car.

It's nice to rub shoulders, a store counter, pavement, a wet market cart and a car trunk with Cute Young Things.

Checker-outer Kim asked (appalled,) "was that MY fault?"

"Kim, is your last name Scissorhands?"

"Um... no..."

"Can you crush stones with your bare hands?"

"Um... no..."

"Do you have a silent jackhammer in the bagging area of your checkout counter?"

"Um... no..."

"Well then probably it's not your fault."

(Obvious sigh of relief.)

The good news is that there was nothing in the broken bag but the broken bottle. So nothing else was damaged. In fact, the milk that leaked onto an adjacent bag didn't penetrate it, so its contents, two bottles of hand lotion, a tube of Neosporin, a loaf of bread two broccoli crowns and a copy of "The Globe" were undamaged.

Meantime, there's a chance to check out one of the great untested scientific principles of modern times. The guy in the movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" says Windex is good for everything from cleaning glass to treating cuts and bruises. We'll see how it does with the carpets that line the trunks of cars.

The back of the car smells like Windex. When that fades -- and it will -- the result will be either no scent, or the stink of milk sitting in a carpet for a week.

Let's hope he was right.

I'm Wes Richard. My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.®
©WJR 2008