Cereal

Consider the snowflake, it’s one-of-a-kindness. Given all the possibilities for crystalline formations, I’ll take their word for it. Better yet, let’s talk about cornflakes, equally unique. If a cornflake were an island, as it is in a bowl of milk, it would show one deep harbor after another. No perpendiculars. You have to admire it for that. It’s as jagged as the right-hand margin of a contemporary poem, asserting its sui generis voice.

I am gazing into my bowl looking for the meaning of life. It’s as likely here as in the cottage cheese ceiling or the book I just found on my shelf, scrupulously unread. Some flakes resist sogginess almost successfully, others succumb to the frothy saccharine lacteal secretion of a graminivorous quadruped.

Where are you going with all this? I don’t know but I’ll think of something.

Truth be told I left cornflakes behind along with Wheaties many bananas ago.  Now, I’m a granola and blueberry sort of guy. But those old orange, rectangular boxes deserve a special place in my thrill-a-minute-life. Wheaties were quite possibly my first newspaper as I spooned and read about the designated champions. For a street urchin as I was, the heroes on the box became my brief idols. There was a certain magic in those words. I was becoming knowledgeable about something my parents knew not. These days the only thing I read is the carbohydrate and fiber content. 

To stretch a point, American history took an unfortunate turn when, in 1937, Ronald Reagan became a celebrity at least in Iowa when he won the Breakfast of Champions award for best broadcaster of baseball games sponsored by…you guessed it, Wheaties. From there it was a short step into the Oval Office. Presumably, he was gobbling Wheaties in Hollywood, as Governor of California and then, and then. Of such stuff B-movies are made. Is this a great country or what?

Enough of such trivial matters. It’s time to talk about how cereal boxes are stored in the pantry. My stepdaughter used to alternate her three cereals, flakes, rounds and squares on consecutive days of the week. If it’s Wednesday it must be Cheerios. This became Christie’s way of ordering through the small anarchies of life.

Friend Fred arranges all his cans alphabetically. As he tells it this is done in case he wakes up suddenly blind, he could grab the tuna fish and know it isn’t salmon. I call it the Artie Shaw Syndrome. The band leader and leader also of obsessive compulsives, insisted all pillowcases face the same direction. Eight marriages later he wrote about it. Fred can’t play Begin the Beguine but has other endearing qualities. He was miffed when his daughter and son scrambled his pantry as a prank. They even switched the Hi-Lo Flakes with Bran Buds. He was confronted with the chaos of life. But he recovered in time to email them that he was sitting at his desk with his will and an eraser. Humor is the best revenge.

As for the turmoil of existence I have no urgent need to tidy it up. Every day snaps, crackles and pops, in no particular order.

Mikhail Gorbachev died yesterday. The photo shows him with Reagan in front of the Statue of Liberty: Our iconic welcoming mother inscribed with our mission, the Man of the Century whose vision and courage liberated millions and the actor in his greatest role impersonating a head of state, all because he ate his Wheaties.