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.