Apple: Not Falling Far Enough

I guess everybody wants to see a little of themselves in their kids. I don't have the biological thing going for me, of course, so I do tend to study them closely to find those small reflections.

I've written before about my son and how I started out looking in all the wrong places for connections with him. It turned out he was not much for elaborate wordplay, and didn't care much about baseball -- but when we're riding in the car he always wants the oldies station playing, and pretty often he says, "Dad, do you have that one?" So we have a fair amount of overlap in our iPods. And I was happy to get him hooked on the finest in visual entertainment as well.

My daughter and I are pretty close in general, but the thing that we talk about the most (well, the thing I talk about with her; she talks about anything and everything with anyone and everyone) is baseball. Now that I'm helping coach her team, I like to try to teach her about the game... yeah, she's not really any more inclined to listen to dad when I'm wearing a maroon baseball cap than any other time. But even though it's somewhat frustrating, we can always connect on some level around the game.

Naturally I can't really expect them to share my preoccupation with the past... or least that's what I was counting on recently when I was able to recapture 8.5 oz. of my childhood.

I've seen a lot of those photos that look like posters on Facebook recently talking about how our lives were simpler when we were kids -- we didn't have seat belts or sunscreen and we stayed outdoors from dawn to dusk without posting armed guards -- but I can certainly testify that one thing was in fact way simpler, and that was breakfast. In my day it seemed as if nutrition was optional; the proper response to "Sugar content?" was "Yes, please!"

So it came to pass that in the fullness of time, and bowl, I started nearly every day with a heaping bowl of Quisp cereal. Like his cousin, Captain Crunch, Quisp was a jolt of sugary, sticky, corny goodness and I loved it. And I believe it was no coincidence that as I got a bit older and was slowly induced to eat a higher proportion of breakfast foods found in nature, Quisp was actually taken off the market.

In the 90s Quaker brought it back as an Internet-only product, and from there it gradually crept into scattered stores. You won't find it in your average Price Chopper or Hannaford, but it is perhaps ironic that I found it when browsing the more upscale Fresh Market (perhaps the only time "fresh" and "Quisp" have shared a thought).

Since it's such a "boutique" cereal now, and since the Fresh Market is so... well, I kinda want to say "snooty", but I'll try "esoteric"... an 8.5 oz. box of Quisp actually set me back more than a normal-size box of a normal cereal (for a real eye-opener, check this out). I was OK with that, though, because I figured one box would get it out of my system.

I bought it on a Friday night and basically wedged it into the back of the pantry shelf, then I went to bed. Saturday dawned bright and sunny and, as basically the only prerogative of the parent, I slept in a tiny bit. As I came down the stairs yawning and stretching, my daughter greeted me cheerfully, "Dad, this new cereal is really good!"

I had already planned bagels for the weekend and the Breakfast Blast from the Past for Monday; I decided to stick with that despite my feelings of foreboding...

... and so it was that on Monday morning I poured the last of the Quisp into my morning bowl. It was pretty good, but not as good as an entire box of Quisp.

Lost in the Pages

I'm sure that from the standpoint of most retailers, I'm probably not the ideal consumer. I'm pretty good with the coupons, I'll drive across town to save 20 cents on a gallon of milk, and it's not uncommon for me to "visit" a product multiple times before I buy it (if I ever do). When stores use "loss leaders" to get me in the door, I love to go in and grab just those sale items and not get sucked in to any of the surrounding regularly-priced merchandise. I'm a trifle on the frugal side, is what I'm getting at.

There is one commodity for which I am the target audience, however: books. I know that when I'm writing one of these, all I really want is for "all of you" to read it and enjoy it -- whether that's engaging with my premise, nodding in recognition, or just getting a laugh. The one thing I can promise from the other side of the reading experience is that I will throw my whole self into it. Sure, I have the tendency -- exacerbated by years of blogging -- to reserve a corner of my mind for the metacritical, "am I really enjoying this? why or why not?" sort of evaluation, but on some level I'm still able to disappear into a book.

I'm also extremely brand-conscious; once I've enjoyed your book, I'm camping on your doorstep waiting for the next one. So last week I got my hands on Faye Kellerman's 20th Decker/Lazarus mystery (OK, I should probably admit that as usual I got it at the library, so in that sense I'm probably not entirely what an author is hoping for) and, having read probably the previous 19, I was ready to dive in.

I was interested by the mystery but it was the 2nd plot, the love story, that really absorbed me. I found myself rooting, trying to anticipate where it was headed next, worried that something was going to go wrong; even when I was finished I found myself wondering what would happen to these characters after the book was over (am I the only one who does that with fictional characters?).

Now it's possible I was influenced by the fact that the romantic couple were... a 15-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl. When you combine my ability to pull a book up around my ears with my ceaseless fascination with my youth, I might have over-identified just a little.

Because when I started to come out of my tunnel, I started to think, wow, this is really sticking with me; I wonder what the rest of the world thought about it...

...and discovered that the world as a whole thought that the book wasn't that great. That the mystery wasn't that mysterious, and in any case got kind of short shrift. That the mystery story and the love story intersected in all too convenient ways. And all the more that maybe it wasn't too awesome to have a love story between a 15-year-old and a 14-year-old that... ah... perhaps took on more adult aspects than were strictly necessary. Not that I depend on the opinions of others to know what to think, but it was useful to get a little more rounded perspective (and maybe get my head out of my... book, a little).

We all bring our personal Stuff to whatever we read or hear or watch, even relationships with others -- or so I've heard from people who have relationships with others. But in retrospect I probably should have stayed sort of outside the book a little more. And by the way, if you happen to read the book: kids, don't try this at home.