Getting Sugar Cereals As A Gift

The topic of Froot Loops (TM) came up in a conversation with a friend, which occasioned this exchange:

Me: don’t know that I’ve ever tasted those. Did you have sugar cereals ever growing up? Maybe for the younger kids while you were chewing away on wholesome unsweetened muesli?
Her: We kids were each given 1 box of sugary cereal for our birthdays. We got to eat it on weekends until it ran out.
Me: Ha! You were not.
Her: We were! I actually didn’t want it. It was too sweet for me. But my brothers loved it.

My brothers loved the sweet stuff too, obvs although we were never allowed the hard drugs: Cocoa Puffs, Count Chocula, Cookie Crisp, Lucky Charms, Trix, Cap’n Crunch, Apple Jacks, basically anything that could be described as Crunchy Corn Syrup. Those never crossed the pantry threshold. My mother was like Gandalf in the cereal aisle, slamming down his staff and shouting, “You shall not pass!”
Meanwhile I was obsessed with Kellogg’s Product 19 (TM) eaten dry, because milk is gross. Friends thought I was crazy, because who chooses a cereal that sounds like Area 51. It’s amazing though, I promise, much better than the “oops, the PR team passed out and we’re on a deadline, let’s get the most boring accountant in the office to think of something quick” name implies. 19s, as I call them, taste like comfort and safety and unconditional love.

Of course, at nearly $6 a box, the taste of unconditional love comes at an unaffordable price in the city, so I only get to eat it when I visit my mom. All the better, in a way: it retains its specialness, unsullied by the mundane exigencies of grown-up life.

RELATED: Save money, buy your cereal at the drug store. If only Rite Aid sold Product 19!

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