A few years back I bought a jug of whole milk at the grocery store. I wasn’t really thinking about the “whole” thing, just grabbed the jug and threw it in the cart.

Growing up, we drank whole milk quite regularly. No problems. Then as 2% came on the market, our family adapted to that because my mother bought it. Occasionally she’d buy skim milk and one of my brothers would cry out in protest: “Mom! You bought chalk water again!” Nothing tasted worse than skim milk on Rice Krispies.

That’s one of the ways we all learn to deal with compromises in life. Our tastes sometimes shift out of choice, but at other times they change out of necessity.

A sliver of reality

It’s a plain fact that as we age, seemingly harmless mistakes can turn into genuine problems. A few years back I got a sliver in my middle finger that quickly produced a nasty infection. Had I not gotten it treated, the finger could have been lost. Lesson learned. Take slivers seriously.

Other mistakes have less serious yet equally distracting consequences. And that brings us to the primary content of the iced chai tea latte I was purchasing at a local coffee shop, and how that turned me into a wholly gaseous planet of my own.

For starters: I don’t like any sort of coffee. None. But chai tea is an effective compromise. The latte milk content enriches the experience. Typically I remember to request 2% milk, or the barista person asks for specifics. All good there.

But sometimes we all forget our respective roles at the counter, or assumptions get made about the desired contents. Then they can become a routine. That’s how the whole “whole milk” formula got started at my local coffee shop.

Having a blast

There was one major problem with consuming those whole milk-based-iced-chai-tea-lattes. Lactose intolerance. The whole milk was gassing me out fearsomely. My gut was going hog wild and that mean quite a few “leans” in the office chair. I kept the essential oils fan running full bore in my office even though the whole milk gas wasn’t making me stink up the place. I felt like I’d swallowed drops of Jupiter.

But tell me did the wind sweep you off your feet
Did you finally get the chance to dance along the light of day
And head back to the milky way
And tell me, did Venus blow your mind
Was it everything you wanted to find
And did you miss me while you were looking for yourself out there

This happened twice in as many weeks. So I stopped to think: What’s causing all this? It didn’t take long to figure it out. The only time I got gassy was when I visited the local coffee shop.

So it’s 2% milk for me at all times now. I’m tired of sitting a half inch off my chair on a cushion of expelled air.

Farting is fun sometimes, and it’s funny at others. But not when you’re trying to get work done and live in peace within your own space.

Being wholly gaseous is only fun if you’re the actual planet Jupiter and that’s because it’s made mostly of hydrogen and helium with what looks like a little whole milk mixed in.

But Jupiter can afford to fart, because it sits out there in the blackness of space without anyone to really check whether it is stinking up its part of the solar system or not. And when Jupiter farts, it makes really beautiful little squiggles on the surface.

When I fart nothing really artistic happens on the surface of my body. The best I can do is wave my hand, swear on a Bible not to drink whole milk again, and get back to work.

Being wholly gaseous is simply not all that it’s cracked up to be.