Milk bags. Ever heard of them? I had some friends over tonight and we were talking about one of my coworkers, Lisa, who grew up in the same general area as my friend Matt. I said, "yeah, Lisa went to the elementary school that had the stoplight in the corner. And that was the school where they had the milk bags."
Hmmm...milk bags. We all were picturing something like capri sun where there is a cute little spot for the straw. Matt enlightened us.
Matt said that back in the day the school had saved up a lot of money in order to buy a milk dispenser so that each kid could dispense the amount of milk that they wanted. Apparently the kids were wasting milk from the cartons. (actually I just added that in. I don't know if there was any waste going on.) In fact, Matt said that he knows someone who was on the milk dispenser committee. At the very last second, some unnamed person pulled a switcheroo, canceled the dispenser and instead introduced the milk bag .
This bag, Matt went on to tell us, was a square plastic ziplock looking thing but the seal went all around. Then there was a straw. There was no specific place to insert the straw, you could do it anywhere. (I am sure that was one of its strong selling features.)
Can you picture it? There was the cool kids who always put their straws in the upper right corner. Then there were the geeks who put it right in the center. The band crowd definitely would have put theirs in the upper left and the drama club I am sure must have been able to do it on the diagonal. I bet the jocks stuck two together and stuck a straw through both of them. Matt says that if you were overexuberant and used too much force the straw would poke right through the other side, creating a mess. Also, if you were holding the bag while forcefully inserting the straw, milk would shoot straight up.
It is amazing to me how vivid Matt and Lisa's memories are about the milk bags. Big day in a small town :) By the way, Matt, did my above link do the bags justice?
One more thing: when my guests arrived they brought a pair of underwear to the door saying they had found them on the driveway. Thankfully, they were elmo size 2T and not jockey size 6 :) That could have been embarassing!
8 comments:
That milk bag looks like an accident waiting to happen! Happy for you that the underwear wasn't size 6 jockey:) Tee hee!
Julie,
You found the perfect picture, that's exactly what they looked like (although ours didn't have any kind of writing on them, they were just clear plastic). Fortunately for all the poor children of the elementary school this program only lasted for one or two years - and at least they had training on how to open them, each teacher demonstrated to the children the proper technique.
The horror of milk bags returned to me for a short period later in life when I visited my roommate's home during college, and learned they make adult versions - half gallon size, where you put the pouch in a pitcher, and cut the corner, as seen here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/17948616@N00/370062854/
Okay, well, this is getting to be a long comment, so I'll leave for now.
--Matt
P.S. You were also correct in your assumption about milk waste, which is what the good program was trying to prevent.
Hey! We too had milk bags growing up and it lasted a lot longer than 2 years (at least K-12 for me). Yes, they could be messy at times for those unfortunate souls who could not figure out how to insert a straw into a bag (it really is not all that difficult if you just think about it). I didn't think it was strange at all since that is what I grew up with. The bag on your link looks more square while ours were more rectangular and had no writing. They did, however, provide lots of fun at times. Unopened bags could be used to launch things (anything) into the air and across the room. They were pretty durable and didn't break too easily. Once they were empty you could blow them up and....well, just use your imagination. Ah...the memories! As for the 1/2 gallon milk bags. I love them. It costs less and reduces landfill waste.
This is long...I will stop now.
And yes, I'm from a small town as well....maybe it's just a small town thing.
Jenni
There is bag milk in Brasil...you either have that or box milk or powder milk. It is like what Matt was saying cut the corner and put it in a pitcher.
I love how you can leave the box milk out of the fidge until you open it...makes you wonder!
Jockey size 6 would be less embarrassing than, say, Fredrick's size 6.
well since jenni and i went to the same school our entire K-12 life, she stole my thunder! we did have milk bags and yes jenni, they were rectangle shape instead of square and had no fancy writing. i think they were like .15 cents a bag. they also had a seal all around and then on one side right in the middle was a horizontal line where they probably put the milk in the bag then sealed it with a permanent "ziplock" seal. and as jenni mentioned, well there was a lot you could think of doing with milk bags for fun and games!
yea for milk bags!
I don't really ever want to see or hear the term "milk bags" again. It just reminds me of these saggy things that are now a part of my body, and used to be perky.
Interesting that "milk bags" has generated the biggest discussion this blog has ever had.
And yeah, Heather of the EO, thanks for reminding me of my not
so perkiness.
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