The Meme and The Myth
Have you seen ever seen the meme “ My dad went to go get milk and he never came back”? Do you know what it means? Do you know why it started? If you have heard of the meme I am sure you think that it is a joke to make fun of kids whose fathers left and abandon them when they were young. Maybe you have seen certain memes that are similar to these.
However, this idea is much more than just a joke to some people. The thought that fathers can easily leave their childrens and use “running out of milk” as an excuse has become a negative intention. Once upon a time, the thought of a father going to get milk for his family, gave a child hope. If a father left their child for a long period of time in search for milk, it meant the child was loved by their father very dearly.
The story goes that the first father to ever get milk for his baby girl took years of being estranged from his family to get this milk. Legend has it that the milk that the father went to get was a magical milk that took years of searching that kept him away from his family. This narrative was captured in three different experiences creating three different versions of the myth. A simple task of “getting milk” now can represent: the hopeful daughter, the angry mother, and the lost father. There is still very little information about the magic milk that the father went looking for.