You Are What You Eat

Posted: May 7, 08 6:48am

I was romping through discussions yesterday and I hit upon a comment by anyardier in the Favorite cartoons discussion.

She talks about sitting down to watch Saturday Morning cartoons while eating a bowl of Cocoa Puffs. It made me think about how important cereal has been to my childhood.

Here was a chance to eat a bowl of practically nothing but sugar and have your parents applaud and think they were giving you a nutritiously balanced breakfast in the mornings.

Every body was happy with this arrangement.

Remember how we used to size each other up, by the cereal we ate?

There was that whole Quisp versus Quake thing going on one year. I was a ‘Quaker’ myself, whereas my sister like the little green guy.

Remember eating all the marshmallows from the Lucky Charms? Or the day Cap’n Crunch people colored some of their puffed corn nuggets red and called them Crunch Berries?

Remember the milk to cereal ratio thing? Milk left at the bottom calls for more cereal, more cereal in the bowl calls for more milk…it was an act of perpetual motion.

Did you buy your breakfast food for the actual taste of the cereal…or was it for the prize?

Did you save your box tops for three months to get your free Styrofoam Jupiter II model only to find out it was just a hunk of Jupiter Styrofoam junk?

How did you feel when you fist saw a commercial for Frankenberry or Count Chocula?

When did it hit you that the modern concept of breakfast cereal was just wrong? Was it the day you found yourself faced with eating a bowl of little cookies and somehow having convinced yourself that they were good for you?

Cereal is not supposed to be healthy…it’s just supposed to be easy and fun. Sugar filled, unhealthy fun.

Some cereals weren’t fun:

Wheaties

Life (/I don’t care if Mikey eats it or not...and what kind of name is that for a cereal anyway?)

Kix (Now that’s a good name! It’s just a bad cereal).

There was really nothing more disturbing than going over to someone that you thought was a “friend’s” house for a sleepover and having their mom surprise you by giving you a breakfast that consisted of one of those shredded wheat bricks in a bowl.

What were you supposed to do with that?

That was one of those ‘when in Rome’ kind of cereals. You had to watch the others to see how you were supposed to eat it. The father of the family would break his up into pieces with his fingers, which was okay for him, but the method looked just way to authoritative to be pulled off by a kid. The mom didn’t eat shredded wheat, but just had coffee or was busy messing around with dishes or babies or something. It was sort of a given that moms were perfectly happy giving the stuff to their husbands and kids, but never touched shredded wheat themselves.

It always came as a relief when your friend reached for the sugar bowl and began scooping little glaciers of sugar onto his brick before then adding the milk being carefully not to disturb the sugar mounds. This gave you permission to do the same and once you had both eaten all the sugar mounds from the top of the floating wheat raft, you had to sink the swelling cinder block. Then you were permitted to stab at the chunk of fiber until a bit small enough to eat broke off…or better, friend’s mother began clearing the table and shooed you both to go outside and play.

“Going out to play”. That is a whole different discussion topic in itself.