You hope to give your baby daughter an Easter surprise, but…
(Spoiler alert) Jesus isn’t the only white thing that’s about to arise…
“Baby needs some warm milk! Can we stop at the nearest Starbuck’s?”
I gave My Beautiful Bride a long sideways glance, shaking my dang head.
“I don’t know if I can I make that happen. You do realize where we are, right? We aren’t in the Atlanta Airport any more, Toto.”
“Just find the nearest StarBuck’s okay?”
Oh, she was so naive, it was almost precious.
Almost.
But you know what was full-blown precious? Our first-born daughter, barely a year old, enjoying her first trip back to Kansas to celebrate Easter with her grandmas. We had flown into Wichita and rented a car to get us to our first destination, my mom’s place in historic Dodge City. So, if you, Dear Reader, want to realize where we were, here’s a Google map of our route. You have joined us about 30-40% of the way to our destination (approximately near Cunningham):
I, being a native son of Kansas, pretty much knew how this was going to play out, but I went through the motions anyways.
“Okay, I’m typing in ‘StarBuck’s into Google Maps…”
“Quickly! She’s getting cranky!”
When the results popped up for ‘StarBuck’s along our route,’ it turns out it was even worse than I had expected.
“Um…yeah, I don’t think we’re doing StarBuck’s today. The nearest one is in Great Bend.”
“Why not???” she inquired a bit forcefully.
“Because this!”
I showed her the map on my phone:
“I’m not taking a ----- detour to Great Bend!”
Okay, time for some fun facts.
- Travel time from our current location near Cunningham to Dodge City: 1 hour, 34 minutes.
- Travel time with a ‘slight detour’ to the nearest Starbuck’s: 2 hours, 38 minutes.
- That ‘Slight detour’? 1 hour, 4 minutes.
- Travel time completely backtracking to the nearest Starbuck’s in Wichita, then on to Dodge: 3 hours, 28 minutes–the most ridiculous option, yet only 50 minutes longer than our ‘best’ option.
- Time just to get to any StarBuck’s (in Great Bend): 1 hour, 11 minutes.
- Ergo:
“So, as you can see, my dear wife, we could be arriving at our destination at approximately the same time we would be rolling up to StarBuck’s, all for only the low, low price of 23 minutes. We ain’t going to StarBuck’s. It’s not like I can magically conjure one up here in the middle of nowhere, so don’t be hatin’.”
“FINE THEN. Just find the nearest coffee shop–doesn’t have to be a Starbuck’s. Most of ’em will gladly sell you steamed milk.”
“Again, I repeat: you do realize where we are, no?”
“JUST MAKE IT HAPPEN. BABY IS HUNGRY.”
“Sheesh! Alrighty then. Since we’re by now rolling through the Kansas metropolis of Pratt, I’ll search Google Maps for ‘Coffee in Pratt, KS’…”
“Hurry, hurry…”
“Ok, let’s see…Scooter’s Coffee? Uh, they’re not exactly open right now.”
“You mean they’re not open at 6:30 pm on a Friday evening?”
“No, I mean that they’re not going to be open for almost another 7 years!”1This story takes place in April 2014. Scooter’s Coffee didn’t open in Pratt until 2021. Source: https://www.scooterscoffee.com/blog/post/scooters-coffee-opens-first-location-in-pratt-kansas
“So what about the next coffee shop on the list?”
“Well, there’s N’Cahoots Coffee and Shoppe…”
“And…?”
“…and they closed 4 hours ago at 2:30 pm.”
“Dangit. Next?”
“Well besides McDonalds–and you know darn well they ain’t got milk-steaming capabilities–there’s Donut Palace…and looks like they closed even earlier, at 1 pm.”
“BABY NEEDS WARM MILK NOW!”
“Okay, if you insist. But you’re not going to like your only realistic option–“
“I don’t care! Baby’s hungry!”
“–gas station milk!” I said as I whipped a left turn across Highway 54 into the Kwik Shop parking lot–not my first choice, but it was the last gas station for then next 30 minutes.
“Wait, what?”
“They got milk. They most likely got a microwave. That’s all you really need to make warm milk!” I laid out my air-tight logic as I Tokyo-drifted into an open parking spot.
“I’m not so sure about th–“
“Welcome to Kansas, Babe!” I yelled over my shoulder as sprinted into the store…
“You’ve gotta be crappin’ me! How old is this thing?”
I stood there in front of the Kwik Shop microwave, holding my freshly purchased pint-in-a-plastic-bottle of whole milk. And I could not believe what I was looking at, then, in 2014 in the Year Of Some Of Our’s Lord.
It was the same type of gas station microwave I remember from when I was a toddler…in 1984. Raise your hand if you remember using one of these guys:
Well, not exactly this guy. I’m talkin’ about the ones that only had the letters. If you recall, these microwaves were apparently only supposed to be used with the various pre-made sandwiches, wraps, and sub-par burgers that the gas station sold, which came with a letter on the packaging indicating ‘how long’ to microwave it. I really really wanted to show an actual picture of one of these, but they’re so old that apparently Google Images/the collective hive-mind of the Interwebs doesn’t know what I’m talking about.
Anyways, you get the idea. It was an old-ass microwave, with a totally useless timing mechanism when it came to heating milk.
But what did this Noble and Beloved Father do? He did his dang best and heated that milk for…ummm…’F’ seconds? Yeah, I think F seconds was about right…warm, but not scalding.
I mused to myself: “Baby’s going to love this F-in’ milk…”
“Hey, Babe, is there a place you could pull over? Baby seems fussier than usual.”
About 40 minutes down the road near Mullinville and 1 mostly empty bottle of F-in’ Gas Station Milk later, and My Beautiful Bride was already requesting a potentially unnecessary pit stop.
“Are you sure, we need to pull over? There’s nothing but empty fields around here as far as the eye can see. Plus we’ve only got about half an hour before we get to Grandma’s. Who’s excited to see Grandma?” I baby-spoke to the baby in the back seat via the rear-view mirror.
“You are! Yes you are! You’re excited to see Grand–“
“Bwwwwaaaarf!”
I about ran off the road as I watched in horror in the mirror a massive load of curdled white projectile vomit launch out of my daughter’s mouth upward with approximately an 85-degree trajectory, thanks to her reclined position in her car seat…
…only to watch, in even slower motion, that mass of vomit succumb to the laws of physics, in which it reached its apex about 3 inches above her reclined face, achieved a velocity of 0 cm/s (as any projectile with a strictly vertical trajectory is wont to do), and then promptly reverse course and splatter all over her face with the same muzzle velocity it experienced upon it’s initial exit from her mouth.
“Ahhhhhh! Pull over! Pull over!” My Beautiful Bride rightfully requested.
“I’m on this!” I said as I took a hard right off the highway onto the next random dirt road.
“I totally got this!” I continued with the positive self-affirmations as I Tokyo-drifted over the railroad tracks and on to the other side until I came to a stop facing the opposite direction.2Okay, so I’m embellishing. I gently pulled over as much as the dirt road would allow me, without changing direction.
I hopped out and helped My Beautiful Bride clean the milk spatter off of her (on account of her being in the back seat with Baby at the time), and of course helped clean up Baby. But lemme tell you, she was inconsolable.
I mean, she was asking if we could get a hotel in the nearest town and then finish the drive in the morning–oh, what’s that?
The Baby? Oh, she was perfectly fine, now that the F-in’ Gas Station Milk was out of her system.
The Wife, though? Did you hear her request? Yeah, the one for a hotel room. Well, I did my best to politely explain the reality of the situation to her.
“That makes no F-in’ Gas-Station-Milk sense! The ‘next town with a hotel’? That is Dodge City! Our destination! I’m not going to book a hotel 2 blocks from our destination, and then drive those 2 blocks the next morning. Sheesh.”
“But…but…”
“But Baby is fine (enough) for now. First StarBuck’s and now hotels, thinking they’re magically sprinkled over this diety-forsaken desolate state of mine. No Dear, that’s not how Kansas works…”
The point of the story is that, frankly, there’s no better way to spend your Easter Sunday than reading about the resurrection…of a child’s poorly prepared bottle of milk. ‘It hath risen!’ Amiright?
Of course there’s other morals of the story, too. For example, maybe it’s not the best idea to resurrect memories of that one time I lightly condescended to my East Coast wife. J.K. Kidding–it’s highly unlikely she’s going to read this.
But the most truest of true lessons to be learned here is: don’t trust the F-in’ Gas Station Milk. Give your kid apple juice or ice cream or something–anything but the FGSM…
Content created on: 7/8 April 2023 (Fri/Sat)
Footnotes & References:
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