The Milk Guy

Back in July 1994, I was really not pleased with the job that had moved me to Columbus. I had gotten a call from Ted about coming down to Vandalia and doing something with him and Chelle, so I jumped at the chance to get out of town for a night.

I had gone to college with both of them and I knew Ted really well. He was quite funny and quite obnoxious in college, but once he met Chelle, that seemed to change him a lot. As it was, I became decent friends with Chelle in college as well. By this time, a few years later, we were on good terms and she was not like a couple of the other girlfriends of my friends that did not seem to like me so much.

I pulled into the cul-de-sac and parked in front of the house. Chelle answered the door and invited me in.

"Can I get you something to drink?" she asked.

"What do you have?"

"We have water, iced tea, Diet Pepsi and milk. But, the milk expires today, so it's probably not any good."

"Actually," I answered, "that's just the date the store can't sell it after. It's probably still good for a couple days." I think I drank iced tea.

We were sitting out on the couch for about 15 minutes talking before Ted pulled in.

He walked into the house and she got up to greet him. These two were in love, their wedding was scheduled the next month, the day before or after my birthday as I recall.

After Ted said "Hi" to me and sat down, she offered to get him something to drink.

"What do we have?" he asked.

"We have water, iced tea, Diet Pepsi and milk. But, the milk expires today, so it's probably not any good." She may have said it verbatim to what she told me.

"Actually," Ted replied, "the milk's still good, they just can't sell it after that date."

Ted was from Jersey and Chelle was from Ohio.  Even though they both spoke English (Ted was also fluent in Polish as well) sometimes things got lost in translation. Ted and Mike Ferrari were the first exposure for me of people from New Jersey. Ted sometimes could come across obnoxious and I don't think that was his intention to come across that way towards Shelley, but I think she took his tone to be talking down to her. The next year or so when I would visit, I learned that I had this amazing power of Ted that I never knew I had. I could turn him from the Ted that Shelley had known into the Ted I had known in college. Not a good thing seven weeks before a wedding as it would turn out.

Shelley did not immediately say anything in reaction to what Ted said, but as she walked into the kitchen, Ted did make a comment laughing. It was nothing bad, just a typical Ted comment as I can recall.

She walked back in while he and I were continuing to talk and handed him something to drink and walked back into the kitchen without saying a word. A moment later, she walked out with a bag of garbage and went into the garage, slamming the door behind her. We could hear her slamming the metal garbage can around in the garage. She was making a lot of noise.

Ted and I looked at each other with a look of surprise on both our faces.

"Is she mad?" I asked.

"I don't know. I don't know what I did."

Across the cul-de-sac, we heard a car door slam.

"Wow," I said. "She's like a ventriloquist, making noises across the street."

Ted picked the wrong moment to start laughing because that was the moment she walked back in while he was laughing at my idiotic comment.

It pissed her off even more and she stormed off into the kitchen thinking he was laughing at her.

"Oh my God," Ted said.

I was not sure what to say when she entered the room again.

"Honey, are you mad?" he asked.

She looks at me and says, "I really hate it when he is such an ASSHOLE to me in front of his friends."

I tried to make light of the moment. "C'mon Shelley, it's just me. It's not like Ted and I are close friends."

She walked back into the kitchen. After a few moments, Ted says, "I guess I better assume the position."

He stands up, puts his head down as though he acknowledges he did something wrong ad purposely and hysterically slinks behind the couch and towards the kitchen. Ted delivered it well because I was laughing and I really could not stop. By the time he got to the kitchen, he was walking normal and he disappeared into the room.

After a few minutes of sitting on the couch by myself, I got up and walked into the kitchen. Shelley was sitting at the table with her back to the entrance turning the newspaper. While I am no expert with a woman's mood, she was clearly not in a good one and I'll leave it at that. I did not see Ted until I walked past her. He had the refrigerator door opened and he was bent down like he was getting something out of the fridge. There was no way Chelle could see him, but I could.

He had the milk out with the lid off and he was looking at me with a huge grin, holding it under his nose, pretending to smell the milk to see if it was good.

I absolutely lost it. I walked out of the kitchen laughing and I felt terrible to do so because my intention was not to laugh at her expense, but somehow I seemed to bring the Asshole Persona out of Ted.

At some point after she stopped fuming, we went out and had dinner and we saw "Ace Venture."  Dinner went smooth except for when Ted joked with the waitress he would like milk to drink, but we calmed her down quickly.

Later that night, she got up to get ready for bed.

"Bryon, if you get up before us, I placed a towel and washrag out for you on the counter.  I also put out a spare toothbrush in case you forgot yours.  I always have these trips to Japan, so I have a bunch of extras in case I forget mine."

"I should be fine.  I think I have everything."

"If you get hungry before we are up, there's bread to make toast, we have pop tarts and there's cereal on the fridge."

Without any thought, I suddenly blurted out, "But Shelley, there's no milk because you threw it out because it expired today."

She was standing there, mouth open, completely stunned and incredulous I said it.  I didn't let it die.  Ted was laughing himself sick.  Without a word, she turned and marched into their bedroom.

"Shelley, I had to say it!  If I didn't Ted would have and he'd be out here on the sofa bed with me!"

The next morning, I woke up before them.  I left a note to thank them.

I thanked them both for a night away from my issues in Columbus.  I told Ted I would see him when he came to Columbus for the Mellencamp concert the week before his wedding and I told Chelle I would see her at the wedding.

I told Chelle not to be so hard on Ted for him reverting back to the Ted I knew in college.  He is a much better since the two of them have been dating and she was the reason for that.

I ended the letter with "PS: Shelley, you are out of milk."

When I saw Ted at my door the night of the Mellencamp show over a month later with Mike, Chris and the others, the first words out of his mouth were, "That was the funniest [bleeping] letter I ever read."

"Was she mad?" I asked.

"Oh my God!" was all he could answer.

I remember their wedding quite well.  It was at the University of Dayton Chapel and the reception was a lot of fun.  It wasn't until the receiving line as we exited the church and I saw Shelley.  I don't remember exactly what she said, but she was only acting mad and refusing to hug me because she was laughing at the same time.

For gatherings after that, I would learn she told people the story and they were all laughing at it, so she really had seen the humor in it finally.  At parties, when introducing me to a couple of her girlfriends once, she referred to me as "The Milk Guy" and they both reacted, "This is him?  He's the one that did it?"

At a Super Bowl party they hosted before moving away, they pulled it out, having saved it.  I think Ted may be the reason it got saved because I think she would've thrown it away at the first moment if he had let her, but she seemed to get a kick out of it more than him those following years.