Whenever my family traveled while I was growing up, Mom would buy travel-size cereal boxes in packs of 10 for my brothers and me to eat in the car, on the plane, anywhere when we were hungry. Which was literally everywhere. The packs featured most of the typical Kellogg’s varieties, including healthy options.
But they also featured a couple sugar cereals. If you read the “Coooookie Crisp” post on this blog a few weeks ago, you know how much we valued sugar cereals. The same was true for my cousins, neighbors and many friends.
One morning in August 1989, a bunch of us sought breakfast in our condo at Bethany Beach, Delaware. My brother Michael (age 9), our neighbor Dave (13), my cousin Brad (15) and I (11) raided the kitchen pantry and noticed there were only a couple sugar cereals left in the only remaining travel pack. Moreover, it was my brother Tyler’s (4) turn to pick first.
Ty was by far the youngest of us seven cousins who grew up together, so he often got shafted when we had to share items. But that was rarely a big deal because he had often been too young to realize it. Like when Mom gifted him a few football pencils for Chanukah the same night Michael and I received the Nintendo game “Super Contra.”
But some adult(s) must have reached us on this trip, because we planned not to screw him over on this morning, as the sun shined through a window of our cramped, busy condo. Then we hovered around the pack full of cereals, including Rice Krispies, Corn Flakes and Raisin Bran.
‘Not terrible,’ I thought. ‘I’ll eat that if I have to. But that’s not what I want.’
Then: “Frosted Flakes!” somebody called out, upon seeing the royal blue box with Tony the Tiger smiling at us and sticking up his left index finger to proclaim the cereal’s greatness.
“Honey Smacks!” I yelled when I saw the box sporting the frog reminding me it was “HONEY SMACKIN’ GOOD!”
Little did we think, but Ty was probably taking this all in. We spanned all the remaining cereals and realized there were not enough good ones left for all of us. Somebody was going to get stuck with Rice Krispies and somebody else would have to eat some strange cereal we had never heard of. “Moooo-ssslicks?” Dave read off the 11-ounce box, making all of us laugh.
“Let me see!” I begged, grabbing the pack out of Dave’s hands. And there it was: Mueslix. A small picture on the front of the box featured some odd concoction of raisins, almonds and dates. This poor cereal did not even have a mascot and it looked disgusting. “What the hell are dates?!” I said. “I’m not eating this shit!”
“Me neither!” Michael responded.
As we sat together around half the living room table, we looked at each other quietly for a moment. Somebody was going to have to take one for the team and eat boring, possibly disgusting cereal. Either that or plead with my father when he returned from his morning run, begging him to take us to the one breakfast spot in town. Which always had a wait of at least 30-40-minutes. Which seemed like hours to hungry preteens and teenagers. Which must have felt like even longer to hungry fathers surrounded by starving brats. So that was not likely happening.
(Seriously: Bethany Beach had only one breakfast spot circa 1989. There were about four times as many Candy Kitchen locations. Priorities.)
Instead we concocted another plan. What if we tricked Ty into picking a non-sugar cereal, leaving the two sugar cereals for the rest of us to split?
“That won’t work,” Brad quipped.
He was right. We knew Ty would request one of the sugar cereals because he always echoed what we said, and we had already blown our cover.
But, Dave suggested, what if we tricked him into eating a non-sugar cereal?
“What do you mean?” I asked, leaning in.
“We could take the bag out of the Mueslix box and put in the Frosted Flakes box. And switch the Frosted Flakes bag into the Mueslix box.”
It was pure genius, I thought. As Ty sat at the table with us, somebody distracted him and somebody else made the switch. Then we announced it was Ty’s turn to pick. Sure enough, he pointed at the blue pack and called out: “Frosted Flakes.”
Michael and I tried our best to cover our mouths and suppress giggles as Dave tossed the box of “Frosted Flakes” to Ty. Eager to see if our trick would work, then we really blew it. Everyone at the table stared Ty down as he stuck his hand into the box and started munching on what he must have expected to be corn flakes coated in sugar.
‘He won’t know the difference,’ I thought. “He’s 4 and he’s a piglet.” Ty and his friends were piglets to me, just as Brad and my older neighbors called me a sped whenever I missed an open shot in pickup basketball or street hockey games.
But after Ty nibbled on a couple handfuls while Michael and I silently giggled a few seats away, Ty looked up at all of us. “Raisins!” he yelled, dropping the box on the table.
Then we all lost it. Ty soon got his Frosted Flakes, while the rest of us tried the Mueslix, to our disgust.
We never tried to fool the youngest cousin again. Certainly not now, as he joins us in that age group where Mueslix is a veritable breakfast option.
Happy 40th, little bro!
