Serious Cereal

I had cereal this morning.

It was good.

There's something comforting about slurping sodden
flakes and bits of fruit into your mouth and crunching
away while dribbles of milk slide down your chin and
you just sit there oblivious like you did when you were
a kid in your jammies with your hair sticking out all over.

I mixed three different cereals together.
This took guts.
But years ago The Man told me it was okay.
No Cereal Swat Team was going to barge into the kitchen at 8:00 in the morning
and arrest me yelling "GET DOWN! GET DOWN! ON THE FLOOR LOSER!" for
mixing my Rice Krispies with my Cheerios.
But still, I feel like I'm breaking one of those "don't-remove-this-tag-from-this-mattress"
kind of laws. I feel this weight of guilt. I think it's because we were NOT ALLOWED
to mix our cereals when growing up. (Note to myself: ask Mom about this. I mean,
I realize that getting any toast crumbs in the butter dish was an act of insurrection,
but what was the problem with mixing cereals?!)

And, here's another thing regarding cereal. I can't find any evidence that Bob Mathias
was ever on the Wheaties box. People seem to think he was on the box...I did...but
according to Wheaties he wasn't and they should know because it's THEIR box.

I mean Bob Mathias! Look at this:

A track star in high school, his coach suggested that he try the decathlon at the
AAU meet in Los Angeles in 1948. He replied, “That’s great, Coach, it sounds
like fun. But just one question: What’s a decathlon?”

Mathias went to Los Angeles and won even though he had only three weeks to
prepare for the event and had never competed in the pole vault, long jump,
javelin or 1,500-meter run. At the start, he had difficulty clearing eight feet
in the pole vault. But with the help of a track manual, Mathias became competent
in the pole vault as well as the javelin. He won the national championship two
weeks later to qualify for the '48 Olympics.

At the Olympics, the unknown Mathias was in third place among the 39 athletes
from 20 countries after the first day. The second day's competition started at
10 a.m. on August 6 and didn't end until 12 hours later because of bad weather
and general confusion. When Mathias wasn't competing, he spent most of his
time huddling under a blanket as he sought to protect himself from the cold
and heavy rain.

The discus was Mathias' specialty, and he responded with the best throw of the
day at 144-4. It put him into first place. Before the javelin throw, the next-to-last
event, cars were driven into Wembley Stadium and their headlights were turned
on to illuminate the foul line because there were no infield lights.

The final event was the 1,500 meters, contested in the gloomy darkness over a
wet and clinging track. When a weary Mathias staggered across the finish line in
5:11, he was the Olympic champion. In just his third decathlon, the 17-year-old
had registered 7,139 points, the only competitor to surpass 7,000.

He shoulda been on that box. I mean it.