Well, well, well, if it isn’t
National Don’t Cry Over Spilled Milk Day! Its here for its annual taunt,
because I can’t have cow, and it happens to be MY day! Okay, so really this is
about an old saying, not about teasing me for my inability to consume delicious
cows and their byproducts! Let’s investigate.
Hmmm…it turns out this is more
complicated than I thought. I have discovered two different plausible origins
of this infamous phrase, from essentially the same source!
The first
suggests the phrase originated in the United States sometime during the Great Depression, when the
price of cow’s milk was had plummeted due to the abundance of supply as
compared with demand. Because of this, farmers received subsidies, which
enabled them to make ends meet, even though they essentially had to destroy
what ever was left over. The second
is more of a metaphor to tell those subject to the phrase that a particular
mistake or failure is not a big deal. When one does something silly, such as spill a glass of milk, it’s easy
to just pick up the pieces and clean up, as opposed to sulking about it. I’m not really sure which is correct; I feel
there may be a truth in both! Either way, I hope we all rid ourselves of the “milk”
we may have spilled over the years…it surely must be pretty sour smelling by
now!
Happy birthday!
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