This afternoon my mother-in-law stopped in and we got on the subject of one of her sons hauling milk in a tanker truck — one of those stainless, cylindrical, highway monsters. Apparently he can only carry milk destined to become cheese and not the drinking kind. To haul milk for drinking requires some kind of certification. I know nothing about hauling milk but that sounded odd to me.

The lovely and talented wife and I exchanged a glance because we didn’t understand why you’d need to be certified depending on the kind of milk. I mean, the truck is the same, right?

“Maybe if it’s drinking milk,” I offered, “you need to be able to handle emergencies like… spills.”

She replied, “Milk emergencies?” She waved her arms in the air miming a trucker handling a milk emergency and shouted, “Don’t cry! Don’t cry!”