Where's the milk?

Have you ever noticed that sometimes kids (or even adults) can be insufferable?

Do you hear this sort of complaining? From a spouse, roommate or child?

The cereal is here on the table but I don't see any milk. 
And there isn't any milk in the refrigerator either! Someone drank it all. Waaah!

It might irritate you. You might get angry, or grumble to yourself. If it's your fault you might apologize.

Math can help.

In these extreme cases, I suggest you overwhelm them with your superior knowledge 


Use math.

Rather than shouting,

Get out to the barn and milk the cow!
or
Run down to the store and pick up a quart!

You can instead say, in a calm and superior tone,

The cereal is in Euclidian space. You forgot the milk resides within a Gaussian curvature. The intrinsic nature of this quadratic surface means you can't always find the milk where you expect it. 

If that's not enough, finish (in your best Twilight Zone voice) with

Sometimes you have to search in a different astral space. Remember that bookstore in the Harry Potter stories? Visible to some and not to others? Here today and gone tomorrow?

Behind the physical refrigerator door there is an alternate universe. Inside IT is the milk you are longing for...

While they are shaking their heads in confusion, you can go back to your morning paper.

Note - no milk was used or abused while preparing this blog