Chocolate Milk

When I was a little girl I remember going to my daddy’s office in building 113 after school and getting chocolate milk. I would always get two cartons, and one thin, brown straw. The milk was Wilcox, two percent with a cow on the front, and games or fun facts on the side. We would always get the chocolate milk just as we were leaving the office, because the kitchen was right next to the elevators. As we headed down the elevators, I would frantically sip through my thin brown straw (sometimes I would get two straws, to drink the milk faster) to consume as much of the chocolate elixir as I could, as quickly as those two brown straws would allow me.

Chocolate milk was my blankie, it was my bunny rabbit, the thumb I sucked to make things better. When I drank chocolate milk all of my worries melted away. My thoughts over my homework, the boy I had a crush on but was too shy to even look at, not wanting to go to karate, which items I should buy on Runescape, or what things I should get for my Sims dissapeared as the chocolate froth made its way down my esophagus.

Times have changed, but chocolate milk has not. The days when I went to my dad’s office in building 113 are no more now that my dad is gone. He had hoped we’d all be better off without him, but I miss getting chocolate milk in building 113, among many other things. I think about different things now. Computer games like Runescape and the Sims don’t interest me as much anymore now that I can earn real money and buy real things. I think I just played those games because I wanted the sense of importance that comes when you can earn your own bread. I no longer imagine fair-tale romances with the crush that I haven’t had in a very long while. Instead, I languish amongst the stale memories of a perfect relationship painfully terminated. I’ve taken a break from karate in order to pursue skiing, but I will come back. In addition to thinking about homework, I worry about where I am heading to after I graduate with my Master’s , and whether I should apply for Google, Microsoft, or both. I think a lot more about whether I am being a good person or not—is it sufficient to make one person happy, or must you make 100 people satisfied? Is there a happiness quota I must fill in order to be complete? There are so many more things I think about now: cooking, money, laundry, research, chores, my side projects.

But, chocolate milk still tasted the same. Before, I would get my chocolate milk free from the fridge in building 113. Now, I buy a gallon of milk from Giant Eagle and mix it with chocolate syrup. My roommate and I go through like 2 gallons of milk a week this way. Chocolate milk is still so comforting. The entire ritual, from pouring the milk into my cup, to lapping it up in small spoonfuls (so it lasts longer), is so soothing. My life is not perfect. But in those moments between the time I mix the milk so vigorously to the moment I sip the last of my chocolate potion from my spoon, I feel relaxed and happy.

Got milk?