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The Goat’s Milk Massacre

Craig Watts

    First graders can be such assholes. They have no common sense, and they can be quite reactionary. Seriously, kids at that age get all worked up over the wrong stuff. The boys would howl in indignation if the girls got out the door for recess first, and the girls would cry if they got passed over to be line leader. Not many people remember how irrational they were at that age. It wasn’t all Elmer’s Glue and blunt tipped scissors.
    For example, cafeteria time was highly ritualized. I remember one day when our regular opaque, white plastic drinking straws were replaced with clear ones. The entire class was bewildered by the difference and remarked upon it for the first three minutes of lunch. But this was nothing compared to the Goat’s Milk Massacre.
    The school’s milk, at that point in time, came in little cardboard cartons that cost four cents. I think they came from Meola’s, Garelick Farms, or some other regional dairy. The cartons were white with red lettering. That was important.
    One day, we showed up in the cafeteria and were greeted not with the familiar red and white cartons, but instead with plain white ones.
    No lettering. No distinguishing markings.
    Of course, this change in routine was unprecedented to us youngsters. Maybe the worldly fourth graders could have let it slide, but not us. Our eyes widened in disbelief, and we began to whisper to each other. How could this be? There were several dozens students in the cafeteria, and the anxiety among us quickly percolated. Someone, I swear it wasn’t me, announced that the milk in the anonymous cartons was goat’s milk. That was all it took to push us past our tipping point and into full-blown psychosis.
    Kids were refusing to drink the milk. A few seconds more, and some kids were crying. These spooky white cartons were enough to make us question all we held as true and decent in our seven year-old worlds. We were terrified of this milk.
    For a few minutes, the cafeteria rang with the wails of the damned. My friend Jim Revell’s face turned the color of a nasty sunburn. Nicole Vincent had a five-inch tendril of snot hanging from her left nostril, but would nevertheless go on to become junior prom queen. And for years afterwards, there were rumors that David Davis had wet his pants.
    In between wiping my nose on my shirtsleeve and staring at my feet, I happened to glance over at Jim Henniger. To my horror, he was sitting and calmly drinking his milk with his hermit bar. It was obscene; but then again, he was a known booger-eater.
    Eventually, one of the lunch ladies emerged from the bowels of the kitchen in her stained floral apron and laid into us.
    “There’s nothing wrong with that milk!” she bellowed with her hacksaw voice, drowning out our cries of despair. “Drink it! Drink it!”
    I don’t recall how the whole thing ended, but I’m pretty sure most of the first grade went without their milk that day. It’s too bad a psychology student wasn’t there to witness the whole fiasco. They could have scrawled enough notes on paper napkins to get halfway through their doctoral thesis.
    Mercifully, the regular red and white cartons were back the next day, saving us from any further mayhem. The suspect white cartons were never seen again. A milk-related debacle would not occur again until fourth grade, when chocolate milk finally arrived at our school. On that day, the kids were dancing in the aisles.

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