Eating a bowl of Kix today (Kid Tested, What Mothers Don’t Know Won’t Hurt ‘Em), I noticed that it wasn’t a whole lot upon completion. About as much as a piece of toast. Not that I scientifically tested this, though I’d say my mouth and stomach are as good measuring devices as anything else in the Scientific Method spectrum. I then followed this up with a bowl of Rice Krispies–not even the cheap knock off brand that has hippos instead of elves dancing around the bowl, one of them snapping its fingers (When you’re a Jet…), the second blowing bubbles, and the third smoking crack rock in an 80′s era discoteque. Rice Krispies has the molecular density of nimbus clouds, which isn’t to say they (it?) aren’t satisfying when consumed by the bowlful. In fact, one of my favourite things to do as a kid with Rice Krispies (back then we did have the cheap knockoff brand, though instead of hippos, we had vaguely crispy looking shapes of unpuffed wheat nodules with eyes–I guess they updated for the 90′s)–anyway, one of my favourite things to do with the cereal was to dump a spoonful of sugar into the middle of a pile of Krispies that hadn’t been soaked by milk yet, and then dunking the whole thing under, I would take it up in my spoon and swallow what had become a large mass of sugary Krispies, like a black hole of sweetness from which no kid can escape.
I love cereal. It’s evident that I may even carry an obsession with it, though I would counter with asking how many times you’ve thought about your favourite breakfast food in a manner that sometimes defies logic and reason. Thinking back, cereal was what grounded me as a kid. Not education, not playing backyard baseball with the neighbourhood friends, not cleaning the chicken coop every two weeks (oh the smell!). No, cereal was what centered me and shaped me and defined my being. You know how they talk about the salad days, they being “they”?
For me, childhood was the cereal days, the days of plenty and happiness, like the prosperous times of a Laura Ingalls Wilder book. If eating our vegetables was what gave us character, eating cereal is what defined that character and molded it into something great.
Growing up, I never had the sweet cereals. Mom didn’t believe in sweet cereals–not like she didn’t believe in monsters or didn’t believe they existed–no, she didn’t believe they should exist. It was the reigning breakfast cereal theology: Thou shalt have no sugary cereals. Even the exotic cereals she would buy occasionally, that did have a hint of honey (never sugar, always honey, as if honey covered over a multitude of calories), cereals such as Granola or Puffed Wheat, were always saturated with such “health” that we kids rarely forayed into those dark woods.
It was only desperation that drove us to taste the health cereals, that or extreme excitement at the possibilities that maybe, just maybe, she had tripped up and accidentally bought a sweet cereal by mistake. I’m talking about Grape Nuts here, people. I’d almost be willing to bet that at least 75% of you who first saw the box of Grape Nuts sitting on the table thought it was a sugary cereal. Its packaging has changed somewhat, so it doesn’t have quite the same effect now, but back then, it was total kid deception. Bright colors, the possibility of grape flavouring, and the red lettering that no one would suspect as masking the complete flavourlessness of this Hell-Cereal. Indeed, looking back, there was only one dead giveaway, something nearly all healthy cereals had–a small box. Maybe if I had been more observant, I wouldn’t have been suckered in.
Sorry for the lack of posts the last two days. I’ve been pretty busy with other things, and I’d rather leave the table empty than set out a rotten course. Hopefully regular and interesting posting will resume. See you tomorrow.