You Don't Get Chocolate Milk from Brown Cows

You Don’t Get Chocolate Milk from Brown Cows

Traveling to visit friends, we drove through many farmland areas. Some farms were growing vegetables, others were more orchid-like with fruit trees, while others held livestock.

That intrigued my four-year old daughter.

“Mommy, lookit, uh, lookit. Oh, I know, COWS!” she almost shouted as she recollected the species. That knowledge led to a conversation filled with questions that had no answers that would satisfy her.

“Mommy, I wanna brown cow for Christmas.”

“Oh, sweetie. We don’t live on a farm and the city where we live doesn’t allow large farm animals in the backyards.”

“MOMMY! I WANNA BROWN COW! She was becoming adamant.

“First of all, Ali, we can’t have a cow but even if we could, why does it have to be brown?”

I could understand if she just said, “COW”, but oh, no! Not Ali. She had to have a BROWN cow!

“’Cause I like my choklit milk and I’d drink more milk if I had a brown cow.”

Ah, there it was. The answer that would provide more questions.

“First of all, Sweetie, brown cows don’t give chocolate milk. All cows, no matter their color, give white milk.”

“NOOO! Mommy, they haveta give choklit milk.”

Again, I tried reasoning with her, but it wasn’t working. My husband, then, made a mistake I’d been trying to avoid.

“Let’s go to the supermarket. The sell chocolate milk.”

I gave Mike a glare that would kill a horse. I tried to remind them both that we were not out on a shopping spree but on our way to visit friends. But the cat was now out of the bag, the beans spilled, whatever! We were off to the nearest market.

Ali grabbed Mike’s hand as we walked through the parking lot. She refused to hold mine. After all, I was now the villain, the traitor of the milk war.

Mike gleefully walked with our daughter to the back of the store where the refrigerator section was and walked down that aisle until they came to the area where the milk was stored.

Ali joyfully jumped up and down, pointed, and shouted happily, “See, Mommy? See? They DO have chocklit milk! I knew it! NOW you can get me my brown cow!”

I looked at Mike. “Really, Mike? What the heck were you thinking?”

Ali took off running. We hastened our steps, avoiding knocking over shoppers, and when we finally caught up with her, I wasn’t sure if I should laugh or hide. I looked at Mike and said, “You started this, you finish it.”

Ali was standing with one of the store clerks, tugging on his blue apron as she explained, “I wanna buy a brown cow.”

“Uh, you want what?” The clerk looked to be about eighteen and now completely confused. “Sorry, little girl, but we don’t sell cows here,”

“You hafta! You hafta have brown cows! You have chocklit milk! I wanna a brown cow!”

A few shoppers heard her not-so-subtle voice and while some smiled endearingly, others hid their grins behind their hands.

Mike stooped down and picked up Ali. While hugging her, he said, “Ali, I have a great idea. Let’s go home and we’ll have some chocolate milk with chocolate ice cream.”

Ali pulled back and searched her father’s face.

“Daddy, you were fibbin’ all this time. We DO have a brown cow.”

“Uh, no, but we have chocolate ice cream and chocolate syrup to make chocolate milk.”

Ali looked forlorn. “No chocklit cow?”

“No, honey, afraid not.”

Then her face lit, and she happily smiled. “I know why, Daddy. It’s not my birfday yet. You can get me my cow for my birfday!”

We continued our journey and Ali seemed to have forgotten all about her brown cow.

That is until we heard, “Mommy, look at all those trophies! Why are they so dirty? Why are they stuck in the ground? Why doesn’t anybody wash them? Why would people leave them here?”

We were driving past a cemetery.