Bob

Batz

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October 27, 2008

Super-Energy Just a Breakfast Away?

I was eating breakfast the other day when I found myself reading the cereal box that was sitting on the table in front of me.

You see, I’m a devout reader.

Oh, sure, I read the usual things like books and magazines. But in addition to those publications, I’m also obsessed with reading clothing labels, matchbook covers, soup cans, cereal boxes, road signs, gravestones and bumper stickers.   

I don’t know why I read so many things. Maybe it has something to do with my 50-plus years in the newspaper business.

Just in case you haven’t noticed, the plots on clothing labels, soup cans and what-have-you usually aren’t anything to write home about, but I read ‘em anyway.

So there I was munching away on my breakfast at the kitchen table one morning recently when the words on the cereal box caught my eye.

Those words – no surprise here – touted the merits of that particular brand of cereal with a picture of a woman and a listing of the activities she is involved in during a typical day. The message, of course, was that this particular woman had the energy to do many, many cool things because she ate that cereal.

What kinds of activities did this cereal box woman have planned for her day, you ask? Well, according to the message on the box, she would attend a baby shower, pick the kids up from school, go to a garage sale, swap car pools with a neighbor, take Jenny (her daughter, I assume) to the doctor, have her husband’s business partner over to dinner, attend a noon garden club meeting and show up for a PTA meeting at 6 p.m.

Yes, it does sound like an exhausting schedule, but apparently this woman is able to do it on a fairly regular basis because she eats that cereal, which contains wheat, oats, barley, riboflavin (whatever the heck that is) and a slew of other ingredients that are apparently really good for human beings.

My problem is, I’ve never found myself with a sudden burst of energy after eating any breakfast cereal. I’m sure most breakfast cereals are good for me, but if I was looking for something to give me a so-called burst of energy, I’d go for a 16-ounce t-bone, or maybe a double bourbon on the rocks.

Furthermore, if I did find myself with a sudden burst of energy, I probably wouldn’t waste that energy on baby showers, garage sales and garden club meetings.

My mother, like my wife Sally, was really big on breakfast. “It is always good to start your day with a hearty breakfast,” she would preach.

The only problem with that is I was a kid in the 1940s and my mother believed the best breakfast cereal for kids was oatmeal. I suppose there were other breakfast cereals around back then, but my mother served only oatmeal and the bad thing about Mom’s oatmeal was it always had lumps in it and some of those lumps were as big as bowling balls.

No matter how much milk and sugar you put on Mom’s oatmeal, the massive lumps were still there and waiting to gag me.

One morning as I was trying to choke down yet another bowl of her lumpy oatmeal, I had an idea. I’d use my spoon to remove the lumps, then I’d hid them under the edge of my cereal bowl.

Two lumps into my ingenious plan, Mom caught on to what I was doing. She gave me a lecture about how oatmeal would enable me to grow up to be big and strong . . . then she sent me to my bedroom for 11 years.   

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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