My Childhood Memories: Breakfast

Like many of you, my loving Mother insisted that I eat a healthy, balanced breakfast each morning. In order to ensure we ate well, she wouldn’t buy sugared cereal very often. It was always cheerios and toast, eggs and OJ. Now, I am not complaining about having hearty, lackluster breakfasts. On the contrary, I believe that the great food I ate at that time of my life helped me to grow up healthy and strong, and it helped me focus in school. But at what cost?

Getting away from these healthy breakfasts were the reason I loved traveling to grandma’s house. Strawberry Nesquik by the bucket, Reese’s Puffs Cereal, Cotton Candy, Lucky Charms, Gummy Bears, potato chips! You name it, we ate it! Now, it’s very possible my memories from 15+ years ago are skewed, but I’m pretty sure everything was fair game.

You can imagine my dismay upon coming home back to plain Rice Chex and Special K.

Being the oldest, I was the “practice child”. My parents would experiment with different parenting styles, new rules and punishments on me. I believe the tasteless, fiber-full breakfast foods forced upon me was one of those punishments. When I got into high school, and my younger siblings were entering school themselves, it became much easier for them to feed us Froot Loops, Honey Combs and Coco Puffs. Finally, when I got almost too old for the mazes on the box, they cave. Notice I said almost.

Typically, the cereals weren’t even name brand. My parents bought the bulk cereals, because it gets spendy to feed 5 hungry kids. This begs the question, can you buy a kids love with name brand cereals? The answer is a resounding yes.

This is why, at every chance I get, I purchase name brand, delicious, sugary goodness to show my wife that I love her, and more importantly, that I love myself.

I urge you, my dear readers, to go and stroll through the breakfast aisle. Let your children choose their favorite. Pick up an extra gallon of milk and the big package of Nesquik. Your children will thank you.