Now-a-days there is a motivational slogan/platitude/catch phrase for just
about everything. "Just do it" "Look on the sunny side of
life" "YOLO" "Dare to Dream" "Just keep
swimming" "life is like a box of chocolates" " Hang in there"
and "think outside the box" However, when it comes to October, I like
to think inside the box. Deep, deep inside.
If you had any kind of decent childhood in the 80’s or early 90’s, or had
children or grandkids who did, then you watched the show Duck Tales either
after school or on Saturday mornings. Some of you may even have had the comics.
Anyway, in the show, there was a character named Scrooge McDuck. He was very
rich and had a room that was dedicated solely to housing his money. It was a
very tall room with a balcony and a diving board. The room was devoid of
decoration except for the money and there was nothing that Scrooge liked to do
more than go swimming in all his gold. Even as a child I thought this idea was
dumb. If you dove headfirst into a pile of metal you would kill yourself, but
it was a cartoon so I went with it.
But what does some cartoon from the halcyon days of my childhood have to do
with October Thoughts? Well, some people have a bucket list to visit Machu
Picchu. Some want to sky dive, run with the bulls or take a picture with a
celebrity. Me, I want to fill a pool with October monster cereal and swim in
it. The realist in me knows that this would be extremely wasteful. I would have
to donate the cereal to goats or a dog kennel or some other place that would
take it. I'm not sure even I would want to eat cereal that I swam in. But the
little kid in me sees Scrooge swimming in his money and wonders why I can't do
that with my breakfast cereal? I mean, cereal is a lot more pliant and less
likely to kill me upon impact that gold coins. But since I can't swim in it, I
will just have to settle for eating it out of a bowl like everyone else.
Someday though......someday.
As a child I didn't care for so called "kid" cereals. You see, I
was an 80 year old in a kid body. My breakfast of choice was either Grape Nuts
or Shredded Wheat (and not the frosted kind either). I liked Wheaties because
they came with great prizes like wrist bands or mini basketball hoops. But give
me a kid cereal and I just reached in, took the prize out and then left the
remainder for someone else to eat. I was a weird kid, who grew up to be a weird
adult.
Once I hit my 20's or so I started to like the kid cereals. But not just
any kid cereals, the October cereals. I can't recall when I first came upon
them, but it was magical. Count Chocula. Boo Berry and Franken Berry, monsters
in a box just waiting for me to devour them. What a great reversal of the
predator/prey complex. Scared of monsters, not this gal, I eat em for breakfast.
Literally. Ever since that fateful day
when I purchased my first box I was hooked. No more sensible breakfast cereal
for me in October. Bring on the ingredients that I can't pronounce and the
artificial colors and marshmallows. Milk just isn't the same if your cereal doesn't
bleed its colors into it.
But just because I like it doesn't mean it is readily accessible. To be a
true October cereal fan, you have to work for it. Every year the grocery store
has a fun little game they play with me. It is called, where can we hid the
cereal so that Rebecca can't find it. Never once has it been in the same place
and often they move it around the store just to keep me on my toes. Sometimes I
can sort of see the logic in where they place it, other times I think they just
do it to mess with me.
They also don’t like to stick to any kind of annual delivery schedule.
Sometimes the cereals show up in August, most times in September and by October
you are lucky if there are any left. This year I found them all one week before
the start of October. I dutifully bought my 3 boxes and put them in the pantry.
I exerted great self-control and didn't eat them ahead of time. Nope, I totally
lied. They were midnight snacks and morning meals and once even dinner.
Needless to say, I had to go back to get more, so back to the store I went and
wouldn't you know it, the boxes were gone.
Now, I am pretty sure I am the only one who really obsesses about October
breakfast cereal. I don't think that in the week since I was last in the store
they sold an entire pallet of the stuff, and I know I didn't buy it. So I checked the produce aisle (it has been
lumped in with the potatoes before I kid you not) I checked the breakfast
cereal aisle (where they NEVER are, cuz that would make too much sense). I
checked the baking aisle, the ends of aisles, the front hallway and the place
where they used to be just in case they had some sort of cloaking device on
them that I of course hadn't noticed. No cereal. So I asked the first clerk I
saw. He told me. Look at the front of the store. I told him, they aren't there.
He looked confused and asked another clerk. She said, look at the front of the
store. To which myself and the first clerk replied, they aren't there. The
second clerk yelled across the store to the customer service rep, where are the
monster cereals? And surprise, surprise, she yelled back. Check the front of
the store. To which the 3 of us replied, they aren't there. Customer service
yelled to a passing clerk and, well you get the picture. Finally someone asked
the fellow at the meat counter who of course knew where the cereals
were.................I'm building suspense....................they were in
the................ frozen food aisle. Well of course, why didn't I think of that?
Nothing says frozen peas and tater tots quite like a monster breakfast cereal.
I guess they could be used as a topping for ice cream or waffles, but really,
in a hidden corner of the frozen food aisle? Sigh. I guess that was better than
the time they were hidden behind the Kleenex on a corner aisle and I only found
them because I accidentally bumped into the display and dislodged enough that I
saw the cereals. See, eating October breakfast foods is not for the easily
discouraged. It's an endurance test that results in yumminess.
Anyway, the delicious trio was obtained and all was once again right with
the world. In fact, I just enjoyed a scrumptious bowl of Boo Berry as I was
typing this Thought. Isn't it funny how I had to grow up in order to enjoy a
kids cereal, and it doesn't even have a prize. Though, the boxes now are kind
of collectors’ items. This year, is the best by far because all the boxes have
stencils on them for pumpkin carving. My two favorite October things united to
bring me joy. I can’t wait.
At first I was cocky and thought that October had the market cornered on
holiday breakfast cereals. But then I remembered Christmas. Christmas gets
everything. I could only remember 2 holiday cereals for Christmas, but when I
looked it up online there were 14, which kind of depressed me. But then I got
to thinking. Christmas is overdoing it. No one cereal is good enough, they need
14. But October, October has 3 tried and true monster cereals. Sure, their used
to be 5, and true, the boxes have been redesigned countless times over the
years. Boo Berry looks kind of like a pale, somewhat stoned Frank Sinatra. The
Fruit Brute used to look like a homeless hippi and now looks like a well-coiffed
jazz singer or 50's greaser. Count Chocula looked like either Ron Burgundy from
Anchorman or a skeezy used car salesman from the 70's and now looks like you
could sharpen knives on his cheekbones. The Yummy Mummy pretty much stays the
same, though I don't know what ancient Egyptians would make of a mummy who was
multicolored but predominantly hot pink. But the one that is my favorite always
somehow manages to look the most ridiculous. For the most part, Franken Berry
looks like a pink monkey. This year his head looks like 2 pink loaves of bread
with a smokestack attached. Or like Elton John. It is like a Rorschach test for
breakfast cereal, I guess you see what you want to. In which case, maybe I need
therapy.
But it isn't' what they look like that matters to me, it is the chase. The
anticipation of the first cereal release date. The first sighting. The stalking of my breakfasty prey and the
acquisition of it. It is all about the hunt and I love it. Who else do you know
that hunts a breakfast cereal? Maybe I could mount the box carcasses on my wall
when I am done with them. October trophies. Just one more decoration to add to
my collection and that wouldn't hurt my feelings at all.
