Expiration Date

I'm just not ever going to be like other people, and they're not ever going to be like me. They and I are just going to live out our respective lives annoyed by each other. A fair example of why came today while I was trying to write a joke. When I'm in a foul mood, I keep writing jokes that are just angry or sad expressions of opinion. I'll read what I wrote and realize that it's just me being pissed off, but it's written in a joke format. I have to throw out a lot of those.

I was trying to write a joke about people who still make jokes about the missing kids on milk cartons. It's an interesting story. Before the '80s, there were no real coordinated programs to find missing kids. A couple of really notable cases galvanized the movement to change that, and the National Child Safety Council was behind the effort to publicize individual cases of missing children and the general issue of them by putting their pictures on milk cartons.

This got going in 1984, and while it only succeeded in locating one live kid out of maybe 70, it's regarded as an effective initiative in that it contributed towards a new coordinated apparatus for finding lost or kidnapped kids. Its legacy also lies in its enduring status as a source of jokes. Anybody suffering from diminished prominence in the public eye is recommended for placement on a milk carton, and so on.

I can imagine making those jokes during the few years the program was active and maybe for a few years more, but by my estimation it's been nearly 30 years since any missing kid was on a milk carton. That puts it dangerously close to cartoonishly old as a comedic premise. Really there is no relevancy to any such reference, but if I try and convince people of that, you can just bet that I would get absolutely nowhere. That's just how it is for me.