Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free
Who taught: Kara, Julie and James
These days, the coding competition, we call it IO days, is a big thing in my company. Maximum 4 people become one team and code really crazy for about 3 and half days and come up with the innovative feature that can bring a lot of benefits to our customers. The winning team gets a pretty big prize. My team members are Julie, Kara, James and me. Our team name is IO_Candy. Haha, IO_Candy FTW. Yay!
Anyway, today, we had our second team meeting for brainstorming our great ideas. In the middle of the meeting, Kara used this expression, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free!” When I first heard it, I thought it means literally why would you want to invest your money on something if you can get the major product from it for free. So, I told them, “Well you can still eat the cow!” And…..they laughed. James answered me, “But then you have to kill the cow!” We laughed again. Julie told me it actually means like “why would you want to get married, when you can get all the benefits of marriage without getting married!” I will let you imagine about the benefits of marriage here. I think the benefit here is the only one. But I do think there are a lot more benefits and happiness of marriage. So, I wanna say, “You do not know about the benefits of marriage until you really get married! But there are also disadvantages of marriage. So, I hope you make a wise decision and be happy with it! YMMV!” (Andrew, how is my usage of “YMMV” here?? Good?)
I am still not sure we can use the expression to describe the situation like what I originally thought. Maybe not??? This is kind of expression that you do not really want to use if you do not know the real meaning of it. It would be really awkward if you use it wrong.
I made it into the blog! I’m gonna live forever!
One additional note I would make about this phrase is that a lot of Americans use it sarcastically because it’s not so uncommon these days for the “marriage benefit” to be part of unmarried life and have no negative judgement attached. (I think it was equally common in the past, but people were less open about it.)
And the idea that sex is leverage a woman can use to convince a man to marry her is less prevalent than it maybe was in the past. Although it certainly still exists. But like you point out, there are many other advantages (and disadvantages) to marriage – hopefully sex is not the deciding factor.
Kara! One is not enough for living forever. I need your continuous contributions. Or, I will ……….;)
This idiom was misquoted in Mallrats as, “Why buy the cow … when you can get the sex for free?”
I once used that line in an email conversation with my former college roommate (when we were just a couple years out of college). He had asked how my relationship with Beth was and that’s what I told him. Well, apparently his crazy girlfriend at the time read the email and forbade him to talk to me ever again, citing me as a bad influence.
He cut off communication with me without telling me why. It wasn’t until 6 months later, after she’d forced him to quit his job, that he broke up with her and told me that’s the reason he had to stop talking to me. Crazy shit.
I cannot believe it! Andrew is one of my greatest influences. He is creative and motivates me in many ways. Go! Andrew!