Cereal and Dad

When I was about 8 years old, I would get up on Saturday mornings to watch cartoons and eat some breakfast cereal. Sometimes I would be up before my parents, so I would have to quietly get the cereal myself and turn on the TV. I did have a few favorite cartoons. The Jetsons was fun to watch, Scooby Doo never failed to give you the suspenseful mystery to solve and then of course, there was Tom and Jerry!

My Mom always bought the same cereals. Cheerios, Honey Nut Cheerios, Raisin Bran and sometimes, Honeycombs. I think she didn't like how much sugar all of the other kinds had and wanted us to eat these kinds instead. Whenever I slept over at a friends' house, I would be so excited if they had one of those sugary, kids' cereals. Froot Loops (which i always thought was odd to misspell "fruit" for kids), Alphabits, Corn Pops, Cocoa Puffs, and Apple Jacks. These were among my favorites and I noticed that even the free toy inside the box seemed to be better than the ones in the Raisin Bran. In Apple Jacks for instance, you could get a cool Batman sticker and tattoo, whereas with Raisin Bran, it might be a Muppets trading card. These are not even comparable in the mind of a 3rd grader. Even the games and mazes on the back of the boxes were more fun on the sugar-filled cereals.

Before my parents got up, I would pour the milk into my bowl of Cheerios and sit in front of the TV and watch my shows. My Dad always told me that when I wake up and get my cereal, that I can only have one bowl. I would always ask if i could have another bowl anyway. Sometimes he would pour me half of a bowl and that would be nice, but I did think how nice it would be to just keep eating cereal all morning. I loved my cereal.

One day, I decided that since he was asleep, how would he know if I ate one bowl or two bowls?! So after eating my first bowl of cereal, I went back into the kitchen to pour my secret, second bowl. This time I chose Raisin Bran since my first bowl was Cheerios and hurried back to the Saturday morning programming. I started eating the Raisin Bran and it was so delicious, but once I got halfway, I was too full to finish. This made me realize why my Dad always told me to eat just one bowl. I took the bowl and mistakenly left it on the kitchen counter.

An hour or so later when my Dad woke up, he saw the bowl immediately and asked why I didn't finish my cereal. I didn't have the smarts to tell him I had a stomach ache, or that it tasted funny and maybe the milk was bad. I told him that I had gotten a second helping and couldn't finish. He told me this was unacceptable and that I would need to finish the cereal so as not to waste any food. One of the many things my parents constantly preached was that we were not a family that wasted food. One of our dinner nights was always a little smorgasbord of leftovers. We would pull everything out of the fridge from the prior days meals and put it in the oven. Mom would put all of the dishes of leftovers onto the top of the stove and we would make little plates. I actually enjoyed this because you got to choose what you would have for dinner and a lot of times, it felt like Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday.

So my Dad made me eat the bowl of cereal I had left on the sink. It had become very soggy, as Raisin Bran does when not eaten immediately and it was a bowl of warm, brown, mush with a few lumps of raisins floating to the top. I think it probably took me a half an hour to finish all of the contents. I had a sour look on my face, I'm sure and didn't speak to him for the rest of the day. I understand now that it was an important lesson that many children must learn. I don't waste food now, that's for sure.

This was the last time that I had cereal. Since that day, I cannot stomach mixing dry ingredients with milk and eating them together. I suppose you could say, I now have a fear of soggy cereal.