as days pass by

When I was a kid, I thought that the epitome of being a groen-up, being a man, was how my dad would take a new, unopen bottle of milk from the fridge and shake it in one hand to mix the cream before opening it. I could never do that; my hands were too small. Shaking a milk-bottle was a two-handed job all the way, involving serious concentration to avoid the bottle slipping out from between my hands and smashing into splinters on the floor. That only happened once: I distinctly remember crying about it, although my parents were decent enough to not make the obvious joke. But the way my dad could just pick up a bottle and shake it about in one hand while his attention was on something else, hand oscillating back-and-forth almost as an afterthought, summed up being adult in my seven-year-old eyes. I’d wish I could do it.

Now, of course, I am a grown-up. I’ve got a car and a mortgage. And I can shake a bottle of milk in one hand. But I don’t need to, because I only have skimmed milk, and there’s no cream to mix.

There’s a message here, I’m sure.