The glass now lied dreadfully on the floor, cracked, fine hardwood covered with spilt milk.  The father looked down at the glass, as did his son.  The former looked down sternly and had his hands on his hips, while his son stared down mournfully at all of the milk that he had not been able to drink.

“Well,” said the father, at length. “Clean it up, son!”

“Yes, pop,” the son said.

He got to work.  After a while, the father commented, “You’d think that after saying ‘don’t cry over spilt milk’ so much for so many years, we’d have got the point already.”

“Sorry, pop, what?” said the son. “What do you mean?”

“I just, I got overly emotional about a piece of burnt toast this morning, you know?” It was obviously sarcastic.  He had burned a piece of toast, but he had been merely annoyed by it. “You’d think we wouldn’t need to hear that anymore, but we do, and I find it mighty strange.”

“You said you liked burnt toast,” his son said.

“That’s just so that I don’t get judged for my horrible toaster sense,” the father said, tiredly. “You’d just think that people wouldn’t need to hear that anymore, after so many years.”

There was a long silence, when his son stood and stared down at the cracked glass with an unusually intense glare. “Well,” he said, as if his brain was struggling to function. “People forget things.  And, uh…” his face screwed up in intense concentration. “The older we get, the more we forget, right?”

His father’s brows rose quite a bit. “Pardon?”

“We forget things when we get older.  And not all new humans know stuff old humans do, if those old… humans… do remember.  Uhhh…”

He put the glass on the countertop and leaned back against the cabinets. “Hrmmm.  I dunno, pop!”

His father just stared at him for a while.

“But I remembered,” he said, “And I’m 49.”