Frosted...

Growing up we ate cold cereal for breakfast most mornings. At school I would hear about kids having things like waffles or eggs and I would think, "Wow, on a school day?" In our house hot breakfasts were strictly for weekends and/or holidays. Part of me was a little resentful about this for a time. I mean gosh, couldn't my mom put in some effort to give us kids a hot breakfast and fuel our brains for a day of tough mental exertion? But then I realized I really didn't care, so no need to resent something I didn't really care about, right? Right. Plus, my night-owl mom had enough pressure on her hands getting up at the crack of dawn to get us to school and herself to her full-time job, so I don't blame her one bit. And now that I'm the mom, I think my parents were pretty smart to keep hot breakfasts a special thing.

We were the lucky kids who got to eat sugar cereals, and we were well-acquainted with nearly all of them. As the mom now I'm horrified at the stuff we were allowed to eat for breakfast, but at the time of course it seemed perfectly reasonable to eat a pile of teeny not-quite-cookies, or fake-fruity corn paste extruded into various shapes, or little rice puffs with "Super" and "Sugar" in their name. It actually made me sad when I found I didn't like Cocoa Puffs or Golden Grahams. Every so often I would try again, hoping I somehow had acquired a taste for them, but then they would sit in the pantry for weeks, until my dad took pity and finished the box for us.

Along the way there was one cereal I always wanted to try, but somehow my mom never bought it: Frosted Krispies. I don't know if I never asked or what, but we always had regular or Cocoa Krispies, or even Rice Krispies Treats cereal; but never the frosted ones. And somehow, in my mind, they had an intangible, or even magical taste quality about them. Like little snowy mountains would taste if you were suddenly transported to the land of arctic cereals with Snap, Crackle, & Pop themselves. Eventually though, Frosted Krispies were discontinued, so I had that little bit of mourning for the fact that I had never gotten to try Frosted Krispies.

Then I grew up and got married, and the Cat Daddy joined the Air Force and we started moving around the country every few years, and the Cat Daddy's dreams came true when we came upon his childhood grief cereals: Count Chocula, Boo-Berry, and Frankenberry. We showed great adult restraint and did not buy them all at once, but over time we did buy them, and the Cat Daddy consumed them with wild abandon, and was very pleased indeed. And my little pocket of grief was triggered by the fact that, while the Cat Daddy's cereals were very cool and hip, they were not Frosted Krispies, and Frosted Krispies were still discontinued, and I was likely doomed to live life with this unrealized, sugary dream.

Well, somehow and somewhere along the line, Frosted Krispies showed up on the shelves of our tiny little commissary here in Cheyenne WY. And I showed great adult restraint and didn't buy them for a long time. But last week I was standing there, thinking, "Skerrib, if you really, really want to try Frosted Krispies you had better take advantage while you can. You don't know how long they are here." I had already chosen some Frosted Flakes for the rest of the family, so I grabbed a box of Frosted Krispies as well.

Now I don't know if it's just me, or if this happens to other people, but I had a moment of foreshadowing where I thought, "Skerrib, all 'frosted' means is 'sugared.' They are just going to taste like Rice Krispies with sugar on them, which is what your parents did for you as a kid anyway. This whole time, you weren't missing anything. Just so you know." But I then thought that, even if that were true, at least I would know for sure. Plus I also reasoned that even though Frosted Flakes are corn flakes with sugar on them, somehow they are better than just putting sugar on corn flakes, so maybe that would be the case with Frosted Krispies as well. Somehow I knew that was a bunch of crap though--I knew that my wiser, inner self was right. But still I had to find out for sure.

And guess what? Now I know for sure that I really wasn't missing anything. Frosted Krispies taste exactly how I imagined in that little moment of foreshadowed clarity in the store. They taste like Rice Krispies with sugar on them. Sadly, I would even rank them over with the Cocoa Puffs and Golden Grahams. Maybe, like one notch better than those, but not much at all.

Of course since I'm the parent, now it's my job to finish the box, much like my dad did several years ago. It is the burden I now bear...