Good Milk Hunting

Standard

Image

Ever notice how guys can’t find anything in the fridge?

“Honey, are we out of milk?”

“It’s on the top shelf.”

“There’s no milk here, honey, better put it on the list.”

“No, we do have milk. It’s on the top shelf next to that Super-Tango-Mango-Ultra-Pro-Mega-Energy-100% Natural-Power-Burst with Whole-Grains-and-Vitamin B1, B6, and B12 Sports Juice you wanted.”

He looks up, down and all around. “No, we’re out of that, too.”

Men can’t find anything in the fridge. Now maybe you’re saying, “Hold on, there, happyzinny, I’m a guy and I’m offended. Just yesterday I found the tabasco sauce, and it had fallen way the hell back behind the lettuce.”

But of course I am not referring to you, dear reader. The fact that you have found my tiny little blog is proof enough that you possess good eyesight and grim determination. I am speaking only of the rest of mankind.

I used to wonder why guys had a hard time seeing a gallon of milk when it’s right there on the shelf. I came to the startling conclusion: Because it’s standing still.

This theory is my own, and is unscientifically backed up by decades of unsubstantiated proof. (I don’t want anyone to think I’m just making up this crap.) Furthermore, I frequently watch those Discovery Channel shows, and I’m pretty sure a lot of sciency thinking has soaked in osmosis-like. Yeah, I said it.

Anyway, for the reason most men have difficulty seeing stationary milk, we need to go back to Pre-Historic Hunter/Gatherer times. Back then, men would grunt and grow lots of hair and chase after animals with sticks, and the women were…well, we were picking berries, weren’t we? Even then we wanted to eat healthier. (And with this, we were learning about ‘ripeness’ by distinguishing between subtle shades of crimson, garnet and fuchsia. This is still beyond the talents of most modern men, who refer to all three as ‘not blue.’ Which, incidentally, might explain why guys sometimes eat food which is ‘not ripe’ and end up feeling ‘not good.’)

Anyway, stay with me here, for the tribe to survive, the male hunters had to be constantly on the alert for movement, because movement meant predators, movement meant prey. Movement meant you’d get a nice dinner or you’d be a nice dinner. Those survival skills were honed for millions of years. Every fiber of a man’s being has evolved with an instinct for detecting even the slightest movement. And that is why most men cannot see the gallon of milk.

If the milk was moving, they’d be on it like a monkey on a banana.

So I thought of a little experiment to test my hypothesis. I went out and bought a ‘Lazy Susan’ device, a turntable that I put in the refrigerator. It starts spinning as soon as he opens the door. (It’s easy- you just hook up a Testosterone Sensor, $17.99, Home Depot, Black and Decker aisle.)

Long story short- Door opens, light goes on, food starts moving, guy starts shouting. “Honey! I see salami! I see green olives! Honey, there’s a tub of butter in here, a tub of butter! Honey, there’s 2% milk! All this food is zooming around, sliding into each other- it’s like the Hawks and the Redwings in there, honey!”

It’s been a great revelation. I put Lazy Susans all over the house- in the bathroom, in the living room, on tables, on shelves. He takes his vitamins every morning, now that he can see them. He always knows where his keys are. He feeds the fish… those poor, dizzy fish. But there’s one thing he still can’t see, and I don’t know if science will ever be able to explain it.

The thing is, I put a Lazy Susan on the floor where he drops his socks every night. That thing has been spinning for two weeks now. It’s starting to look like that structure from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It’s a mountain of socks spinning round and round like some smelly carousel from hell.

And still he says, “Honey, I can’t find any socks. Am I out of socks?”

*****************************************

HOT TIP! Sometimes, when you are helping guys find something stationary, and you don’t have a Lazy Susan device, it can be helpful to give them directions in a language they understand. Learn to speak a little ‘Man.’ I’m fluent in two dialects of Man: ‘Hockey’ and ‘WWII.’ For this situation, because the guy was in a stationary position, stooping in front of the open refrigerator, I would opt for the WWII dialect, ‘Bomber Pilot.’

“Eleven o’clock, O’Malley, eleven o’clock! The milk’s coming out of the sun at eleven o’clock! For God’s sake, look out!”

Instantly your fellow will find the milk!

*****************************************

No cows were squeezed during the making of this post.

25 responses »

  1. You need to have this published in an anthropology journal. Or maybe Ladies’ Home Journal. THIS is what I’ve been wondering about for years. THIS. Mr. Weebles does the same thing. Not just about milk, but about ANYTHING not moving in the refrigerator. Which means everything (aside from some stuff that’s been left in there too long and may have become sentient). I didn’t think of the whole Hunter mindset. But it makes perfect sense. Maybe what we need is some sort of self-rotating lazy susan to put in the fridge, and then they’ll see things more easily.

  2. I think what you have just said is definitely backed up by Science, Maths, History, Geography, the lot. I would just quibble with you on one point – it’s not necessarily only moving objects that men can see, I find if you tape the object to the guy’s face then pretty soon they become aware of it. Other than that, I think you’ve cracked an age-old mystery, and I for one am rather excited by this. 😉

  3. I’d also add that men can see stationary objects if: They have breasts (any – real, drawn, inflatable etc. including breasts drawn onto a milk bottle); it has alcohol in (so put wine labels on your milk bottles); it has a scoreline (so try, Milk 2 – Dairy 0?)
    I can do nothing for you regarding the sock issue!

    • Welcome, Panda! You’ve raised some excellent points.
      My home is going to look extremely unusual by morning, but at least it will be easy for the guy to find things. Heck, I’ll have to wrestle him for the milk jugs!

  4. You know this is sort of related, but I bought some milk the other day, brought it home, opened it, poured mahself a glass, took a sip and it tasted like meat. Then, I closed it up, got in my car, drove back to the store and returned it for some non-meaty tasting milk.
    Yeah, it’s been one of those years already.

    • Thanks for coming by and commenting, Jules, and a great big Ugh! I know the milk’s been inside a cow and all, but it’s not supposed to taste like meat! Unless, of course, it was part of that insidious campaign to put bacon flavoring in everything? Jelly beans, ice cream…

Leave a reply to happyzinny Cancel reply