Got Milk?

I was brought up drinking milk, which I was assured is Nature's most nearly perfect food. It's a family obsession.

My paternal great-grandfather is supposed to have said that the difference between the Poles and the Galitsians is that when a Pole makes money, he buys a showy horse, but when a Galitsian makes money, he buys a cow so the children can have fresh milk. You can pretty well guess which ethnicity my family claimed. In fact, my father's family was so besotted with the nutritional value of milk that it is still the preferred beverage of not only me, but my five paternal cousins.

I remember once when, at age twenty-five, I was taken out to eat by my parents and ordered a Coke to go with my lunch.

"Honey, don't you mean milk?" my father asked, his eyes sad, his voice solemn.

Hastily I explained I'd learned that restaurant milk never made it to the table cold enough for my taste and was sort of forgiven. Sort of.

He needn't have worried. My calcium level is so high that an osteoporosis test reported my bone density is fourteen percent higher than a woman's half my age. No wonder I've never broken a bone.