Fortunately, the Milk

“He looked like he was going to suggest that we have something for breakfast that you do not need milk for, like sausages, but then he looked like he remembered that, without milk, he couldn't have his tea. He had his ‘no tea’ face.”

Later in the book, the children’s father spins a story to explain why he took so long getting the milk. In his story, the protagonist (himself) is portrayed as a selfless, caring father who will do literally anything to get the milk back for his children’s breakfast—without question. However, this early quote shows that he is initially reluctant to go out to buy milk. It is not until he realizes that not having milk will impact him too that he decides to go to the store. These lines give the impression that the father is selfish, a characterization that is later called into question by the enjoyment he derives from spending time telling his children stories. This quote portrays the father as a scatterbrained, somewhat typical father.

“‘You ran into someone you knew,’ I said, ‘and you lost track of time.’ ‘I bought the milk,’ said my father. ‘And I did indeed say brief hello to Mr. Ronson from over the road.’”

The father just got home with the milk, having taken a very long time. The little sister asks why it took so long. The young boy answers for their father, likely based on prior experiences when their father got distracted. In the second half of the quote, the father admits that his son is right; he did run into a friend. However, rather than leave it there, the father claims that this distraction was “brief” and the reason he took so long was because of the alien abduction—which leads into the story he tells his children.

“‘If I did not go to the corner shop to fetch the milk,’ I asked them, ‘then where did this milk come from?’”

The father uses the milk to prove to the Queen of Pirates that he is not a spy or a “walrus in a coat” (17). This is the first time that the precious milk is used as proof of the father’s story. It is held up again as proof to the jungle people, and back in the kitchen, it is held up to his children as evidence that his story is true.

“‘Walking the plank!’ I said. ‘It's what proper pirates do! Look, I'll show you. Do you have a plank anywhere?’”

The father explains to the 18th-century pirates that “real” pirates make their captors walk the plank. He gives himself another choice (the current options are having his throat slit or joining the pirate crew), foreshadowing his rescue. This quote shows how Gaiman introduces humor into a scary situation. The father is not afraid; in fact, he enthusiastically helps the grateful pirates construct the plank, reassuring his children that despite challenges, he has the situation under control.

“I said, ‘You're a stegosaurus!’ ‘I am an inventor,’ he said. ‘I have invented the thing we are traveling in, which I call Professor Steg’s Floaty-Ball-Person-Carrier.’”

This is an example of Gaiman’s absurdist writing style, whereby Professor Steg (the inventor cited in this quote) names objects by their function. The “Floaty-Ball-Person-Carrier” is the hot air balloon Steg is traveling through time in. Professor Steg responds to the father’s exclamation that Steg is a Stegosaurus with a counterstatement that she is “an inventor”—highlighting that what a person does is more meaningful than their appearance. Here, the father refers to Professor Steg as “he,” an incorrect assumption based on gender stereotypes.

“‘And right now we are 150 million years in the future.’ ‘Actually,’ I said, ‘we are about 300 years in the past.’”

Professor Steg pinpoints where they are in space and time relative to her present, which is far back in the past. The father corrects her; his present is 300 years in the future, and unlike Steg, he has traveled back in time to reach this point with her. This quote touches on the relativity of time and the idea of perspective. Both Professor Steg and the father are correct: One has traveled forward in time, while the other had traveled backward. This dispute recurs good-naturedly throughout the story.

“‘Dinosaurs are reptiles, sir,’ said Professor Steg. ‘We do not go in for milk.’ ‘Do you go in for breakfast cereal?’ I asked. ‘Of course!’ he said. ‘Dinosaurs LOVE breakfast cereal.’”

Professor Steg and the father converse about milk. This captures the way in which Gaiman juxtaposes fact (dinosaurs are reptiles and therefore don’t drink milk) with fiction (of course dinosaurs adore cereal), as if stating the obvious. Here, the father and Steg are getting to know each other; discussing breakfast turns out to be a way of starting their friendship.

“All the dinosaurs have gone off into the stars, leaving the world to mammals.”

Professor Steg tries to convince the father that they are in the future, as the dinosaurs have left the world and gone to the stars. Father is happy to hear that the dinosaurs chose to move into space rather than being wiped out, as humans believe. This happy twist on the extinction of dinosaurs shows how the father is thinking of his children. He knows his young son loves dinosaurs: Having them happily go and live among the stars, rather than dying off, is a much more satisfying answer to their disappearance from Earth.

“‘I am even further from my children and our breakfast,’ I said. ‘You have your milk,’ he said. ‘Where there is milk, there is hope.’”

After the first time-leap, the father and Professor Steg end up even further back in time (from the father’s perspective). Here, the father is bemoaning the fact that he is now further from home, but Professor Steg, who is unflappable and optimistic, points out that the father still has the milk—all is not lost. At the end of the father and Steg’s adventures, the milk becomes the hero and saves the universe (according to the dinosaurs). Steg’s phrase “where there is milk, there is hope” thus foreshadows the critical role the milk will play in the future. At this point, the father still thinks Steg is male.

“‘Are there any ponies in this?’ asked my sister. ‘I thought there would be ponies by now.’” 

Here, the sister interrupts her father’s story. This serves several purposes. It brings the audience back into the real-world kitchen, reminding them that the original narrator is the young boy who is listening to their father’s excuse for taking so long to get the milk. The sister’s request for ponies gives her an age-appropriate interest and hints that she might be getting bored with a story that doesn’t feature any. These brief interludes give some insight into the father’s character and imagination. His children have clearly heard their father tell many stories (shown by the sister’s expectation for ponies to appear); this illustrates The Parent-Child Relationship that the brother and sister have with their father, and how the trio experiences closeness through storytelling.

“Unfortunately, I dropped the milk. I wasn’t holding on to it tightly enough.”

The book’s title, Fortunately, the Milk, runs throughout the story in various forms, underscoring the safe passage of the milk home to the children. Here, “fortunately” is replaced by “unfortunately,” as the father dropped the milk during the volcanic eruption. This quote is a play on the recurring phrase; by adding two letters to the word “fortunately,” it replaces a sense of security and protection with one of loss and dread.

“I agreed, gloom and despair and despondency overcoming me. ‘That man in that balloon stole my milk […] Now I will never get home. My children will never have breakfast.’”

After having dropped the milk, the father explains to Steg why he feels gloomy. This quote underscores the importance that the father has attached to getting the milk back to his children, showing his dedication to them. The thought of his children not having breakfast triggers excessively “depressive” emotions: gloom, despair, and despondency. This disproportionate emotional response adds hyperbole or exaggeration, as well as absurd humor, to the narrative. The introduction of “that man”—who is the father coming back from the future—speaks to the relativity of the space-time continuum, which is explored later in the book.

“‘Why are you a pink pony with a pale blue star on the side?’ I asked. ‘I know,’ the pony said with a sigh. ‘It’s what everybody’s wearing these days. Pale blue stars are so last year.’”

In the father’s story, the father chats to the “very clever ponies” that he meets in between time jumps (48). The ponies make an appearance at the little sister’s request and do no more than add humor and interest for the sister, rather than adding to the plot. The father uses comic language. His reference to the star matches the star on the little sister’s shirt, shown in Young’s illustrations. The inclusion of the colorful, clever ponies shows that the children’s father is telling the story for the children, incorporating specific characters he knows they will love and relate to. In other words, the father is not telling a story purely for the pleasure of storytelling.

“‘You look so sad, ‘Professor Steg told me. ‘I am! It’s the milk. My children are breakfastless […].’”

Professor Steg and the father are retrieving the future stone, but they are still without the dropped milk. The father explains to Steg that he is sad because they have lost the milk. This quote underscores the theme of dedication to a particular cause, however ridiculous. The quest for the milk and getting it back for breakfast are the only things on the father’s mind. However, in reality, the father was happy to stop and chat for hours—seemingly unconcerned that his children were waiting at home for him. This disconnect suggests that the father is likely aware of his faults, but avoids addressing them by using storytelling as a diversion.

“‘He did say he’d explain later,’ I pointed out. ‘And that wasn’t much of an explanation.’ ‘But it’s not later yet,’ said Professor Steg. ‘It’s still now. It won’t be later until later.’”

Future father has just plucked the milk out of a past version of his own hand and thrown it back to him through a hole in the space-time continuum, without explanation. Steg’s statement about “later” suggests that time is relative. This quote also underscores the differences between the father and Steg. The father is impatient—wanting later to be now, while Steg is content to let “later” evolve into “now” at the appropriate time.

“‘Now you must sign the planet over to us so that we can remodel it. We will take out all the trees […] and put in plastic flamingoes.’ ‘Why?’ ‘We like plastic flamingoes. We think that they are the highest and finest art form that Earth has achieved. And they are tidier than trees.’”

The aliens explain their remodeling plan to the father. The horror that the father and the galactic police feel at the aliens’ proposal to remodel Earth with plastic trinkets speaks to an important real-world dilemma. Replacing messy trees with tidy plastic flamingoes as a form of art seems absurd, but it is not dramatically different than what humans are already doing to Earth.

“And Australia will be replaced by a really seriously big plate with Australia on it.”

This builds on the message about destroying Earth. The aliens explain another part of their remodeling plan. What starts as replacing trees and clouds expands into replacing whole countries with a fake version of that country. Later the galactic police charge the aliens with “breaking into people's planets and redecorating them […] And then running away and doing it somewhere else over and over” (91). The aliens’ activity mirrors the direction that humans might be going in with respect to space exploration, after irreparably damaging the Earth. Gaiman takes the concept of destroying nature in favor of plastic replicas to the extreme and places the destruction in the hands of “aliens,” making the underlying message less didactic.

“‘I’ll explain later,’ I said. ‘Fate of the world at stake.’ I grabbed the milk from me, fifteen minutes earlier, through the tiny space-time portal.”

In this quote, the father is back on the spaceship, having been abducted (along with Professor Steg) by the aliens for a second time. Showing his ingenuity, the father uses the “tiny space-time portal” to reach back to the version of himself from 15 minutes earlier to borrow the bottle of milk. Here, the father is talking to himself. This is the moment that completes and explains the time loop which confused the version of father from earlier (Quote 16). It is also the moment that the father’s escape plan becomes clear, and the foreshadowed touching of “the same object from two different times” (15) becomes an imminent event.

“‘And why is your gorilla holding a transtemporally dislocated milk container?’ ‘I am not a gorilla,’ I said. ‘I am a human father.’”

The speaker in this quote is one of the dinosaurs from the galactic police force who talks to Professor Steg, trying to find out who Steg and the father are. The dinosaur does not know the difference between a gorilla and a human but does recognize the milk container and clearly knows about time travel. This humorous mix of advanced intelligence with naivety is characteristic of Gaiman’s writing throughout the narrative. The joke continues, with the dinosaurs calling the father a gorilla until Professor Steg corrects them, to which they marvel: “How can you tell the difference […] Is it the shoes?” (100).

“Would you be…? Could you be…? […] Professor Steg, wisest of all dinosaur-kind? MADAM, IS THAT TRULY YOU?”

An adoring Pteranodon recognizes Professor Steg. The Pteranodon’s exclamation shocks the father, who wrongly assumed that Professor Steg was male. This mistake touches on gender stereotyping, and the fact that “male” is the gender automatically associated with brilliant inventors. Professor Steg never mentions her gender; it is her brilliance as an inventor that makes her a time-traveling legend in the future, not the fact that she is a female inventor—suggesting that it is just humans who suffer from sexism.

“‘I can’t believe it,’ said the Diplodocus. ‘Professor Steg. Just like in the comics. The dinosaur who taught us that in the far future, small mammals will eat their breakfast cereal with milk on it. […] She’s here, in front of us, with her gorilla.’”

A Diplodocus joins Professor Steg and the father after the father accidentally touches the two milks together. The Diplodocus is just as awestruck as the Pteranodon at being in the presence of Professor Steg, and like the other dinosaurs, mistakes the father for a gorilla. This quote suggests that comics can play an important role in teaching history (Gaiman is the author of the critically acclaimed comic book series, The Sandman, 1988-1996). Professor Steg’s comics, mentioned in this quote, prove Steg’s earlier statement correct: In the future, she will write about small mammals putting milk on their cereal. This closes another time loop.

“‘We were both fortunate that you had the milk with you. It is not every container of milk that saves the world, after all.’ ‘That was me that saved the world,’ I said. ‘Not the milk.’”

The father says goodbye to Professor Steg and thanks her for saving his life. Here, Professor Steg humbly replies, giving all the credit to the milk and taking none for herself or for the father. The father indignantly points out that it was he who saved the world. The dinosaurs add humor: They do not waver in their belief that the milk is the hero, asking the father whether he’s going to put it in a museum when he gets home.

“We looked at those things, and we looked at my dad. ‘You know, we don’t believe any of this,’ said my sister.’”

The father has finished his story, explaining what happened on his way home from the store. Both children notice that objects in the kitchen match the characters in their father’s story, such as a model dinosaur, vampire books, and toy ponies, reinforcing their skepticism. The fact that there was the slightest possibility in the children’s minds that their father’s story was true testifies to The Power of Storytelling and their father’s skill.