Condensed Milk

I had a Proustian moment yesterday. A colleague had left a Thai coffee sweetened with simple syrup and loaded with condensed milk on my desk. I drank about half of it. At first taste it had a stale, flat quality that brought to mind the itchy sweaters, distant relatives, and the food of Christmastime. The realization hit me, I hate condensed milk, but the only time I've ever had it was at Christmas when one of my relatives would make baked goods using it. Drinking that sweet, condensed milk coffee was like one of them reached across 25 years of history to offer me a crappy cookie.