gullybogan

Dear Reader,

Maybe i’ve been spending too much time thinking about the discarded condom wrappers turning up in my carpark spot, but is there, or is there not, something vaguely sexual about the opening instructions on a Big M milk carton?

Probably not.

Although it wouldn’t be the first time that sex and milk were joined together in the mind of consumers. Specifically with regard to the Big M brand.

But that’s not what i want to talk about today.

Today i want to talk about getting milk out of cardboard cartons.

Back in the Day

When i was a teenbogan, there was only one way to get milk out of a Big M milk carton. You had to open it as shown.

Our school tuck shop was too stingy to give out straws, so you had to push both the flaps right back, squeeze the edges in, and then bend back the sharp ridges at the top of each flap so that you wouldn’t cut your nose when drinking.

It was a craftsmanlike affair.

Not unlike separating the two sticks in a Peters Pop.

But i risk digression.

With the advent of straws, late in my high school career – our tuck shop won Tattslotto or something – it was possible to then insert the straw into the gaping hole, and close the flaps gently on its rigid length, so as to hold it firmly and tighly in place. This meant less spillage down the front of one’s chin and jumper.

The Ingenious Slot

Then, long after i left school, someone invented the ingenious slot on the side of the pitched roof of the carton, making the whole flap business obsolete.

Instead of needing to knapstone your carton into drinking form, you could just lift up the little pre-perforated skin covering the Slot, pierce the Slot with your thumbnail, lick the froth from your thumbnail, and then plunge the shaft of your straw into the frothy pink sweetness inside.

The trick here was to make the slit you pierced in the Slot so thin that the straw was held tight by the barely-parted furry membrane, so that there was an almost hermetic, prom-night snugness about the fit.

But the problem with the slot is that you need to use a straw.

And, if you don’t like putting filthy things in your mouth, the straw needs to be clean.

Which brings us to the Widget Cafeteria.

The Widget Cafeteria

Mister Widget has provided for his menials what he likes to call “The Cafeteria”.

In fact, it is just a pantry with a servery hatch, and a roller door to seal off that servery hatch when sealing off is required.

And, inside the pantry, there’s a rolypoly women in her fifties, with a maroon tunic and a white apron, and a limp that she manages to get going as she steps from one side of the cupboard to the other.

She’s one of those women who calls you ‘Luv’, and who thinks she knows you individually.

She always greets me, “G’day, Luv?”, questioningly, her voice riding up at the end like the way her tunic does when she reaches up to the highshelf for a packet of chips (which is why i don’t ask for chips), and then goes on to try to guess my regular. “Will you be having your chicken burger today?”

I’ve never ordered a chicken burger.

Two reasons.

1. I don’t eat chicken
2. I have no idea how she prepares the chicken burgers that sit in the two-foot-long bain marie, or how long they’ve been there
3. All the food in the bain marie has little metal-pronged labels stuck into them, and i’m pretty sure she doesn’t ever wash the metal prongs

[I know that was three reasons, but i'm mimicking the way you get things you don't ask for from this cafeteria. It's supposed to be a clever writer thing. So let's pretend it was witty and just keep going.]

I ask for a Big M, and she grabs one from the bar fridge, where she also keeps the cut onions she uses for the salad (ham, onion, tomato) rolls she makes on request, and then reaches her grimy, chicken-burger-preparing, ham-handling, change-counting hands into the straw cup she keeps on the shelf behind her to stop customer abuses of straw privileges, grabs a straw by the end that goes either into my mouth or into the drink, and puts it down next to the Big M, on the counter, where everyone puts their hands, rests their food, coughs, vomits, whatever.

So the straw, dear Reader, is unclean.

I hand over my filthy lucre, take the onion-scented Big M, leave the straw, and turn to go, and then she calls me back, saying, “Hoi, Luv? You’ve forgotten your straw?”

So i pick up the straw in the middle where it’s cleanest, and smile, and drop it in the bin back at my desk.

Every time we do that little routine, and she never remembers.

Back to the Day

I tried for a while bringing in my own straws, dear Reader, from home, but that struck me as a trifle pathetic. So now i just knap up the old pink flappy entrance hole the way i did back when i was wearing a uniform and studying Chemistry and Physics and the works of Ernest Hemingway and William Golding.

So far, i have managed to avoid spilling the milk down my chin and onto my jumper.

Come to think of it, i don’t wear a jumper.

So things’ll probably work out fine.

Yours,
Gullybogan