That’s how one TV news anchor explained the common Southern compulsion to dash to the grocery store to buy milk and bread whenever snow is forecast.
I’ve tried to figure it out because, well, trying to figure out why people do what they do seems to be a peculiar interest of mine. Some people knit or do Sudoku puzzles. I psychoanalyze. (Trust me, my husband wishes I’d give it up and just play golf.)
I observed the milk-and-bread frenzy again recently when snow wreaked a little havoc in our area.
As the flakes began falling, I was driving to the post office to mail a birthday card. I noticed a nearby grocery store was already jam-packed with shoppers stocking up like pioneers laying in supplies for a harsh winter on the frigid plains of North Dakota.
I’m used to this phenomenon, but I still don’t get it, given that snow typically melts off our roadways within a day or two.
How much milk and bread does a person need to survive for 24 hours?
I think maybe some kind of subconscious, primal survival instinct drives us to do this. Like bears pigging out before winter hibernation.
Or maybe it’s become a beloved, comforting tradition, like eating turkey at Thanksgiving or shooting off fireworks on July 4th.
“Hey y’all, it’s gonna snow! Let’s pack up the kids and go to Food Lion!”
Apparently I’m not the only one who wonders about this. When I got home from my post-office errand, I turned on the news and saw a report on this very thing.
A reporter went to a grocery store and asked shoppers, “Why are you buying milk and bread?”
Several looked genuinely puzzled and then answered, “I’m not really sure.”
The segment ended with one of the news anchors saying, “We don’t have to understand it or explain it. It’s just what we do in the South.”
Yes, it is.
And it makes me wonder what else we may do just because “it’s what we do.” What habits, rituals, routines and traditions do we engage in without really understanding why?
Some are certainly okay, like buying milk and bread before a snow, but I think it’s good for us to stop and consider our ways from time to time.
“Look carefully then how you walk! Live purposefully and worthily and accurately, not as the unwise and witless, but as wise (sensible, intelligent people),” the Bible advises in Ephesians 5:15 (Amplified Bible).
I know it’s not healthy to get stuck in the “paralysis of analysis” that comes from overthinking relatively unimportant things. With so much information now available at our fingertips, we could waste days just gathering data on which toothpaste to use.
No, it’s not practical to obsess over every little thing, but neither is it safe to mindlessly cruise through our days in auto-pilot, never stopping to understand the motivations or consider the ramifications of our actions.
In the biblical book of Proverbs, King Solomon says wisdom “shouts in the streets,” calls out for us to pay attention … and mocks us if we refuse to listen and end up suffering unpleasant, or even disastrous, consequences.
“How long, O naïve ones, will you love being simple-minded?” Proverbs 1:22 says.
Solomon also identifies the source of the wisdom we need to do life well: God.
If we don’t filter our plans, decisions and actions through the grid of God’s Word, the Bible, we may end up wasting a lot of things we really don’t want to waste—time, energy, money, even our very lives.
Why do we do what we do? It’s worth thinking about.
“In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.” – Proverbs 3:6