Yesterday I had to run to the grocery store to pick out some food for an overtired, underfed chorister. Among the foods we had run out of was Crispix, the rice and corn chex-like cereal, of which she occasionally has a bowl before bedtime.
The cereal aisle was every bit as visually noisy as it was designed to be, and since Sunday afternoon is a prime time for grocery shopping in Evanston, people had been picking up and putting down boxes in a variety of places. I spotted the mammoth boxes of Crispix, but decided to compare the price of the smaller box, and (as is often the case) the smaller box was actually less expensive per ounce, so I grabbed a box and brought it home.
Well, not exactly. It turns out that someone had replaced the most accessible box in the smaller-Crispix place with a box of “Kellogg’s Pirates of the Caribbean” cereal, chocolate blobs interspersed with marshmallows shaped in piratical motifs. (I link to the Google image search page because the available online images come from Kellogg’s, which forces a pop-up Flash window; a salacious Hollywood gossip site; and eBay, where the images will soon have disappeared.) When Pippa reached for the cereal last evening, not only would she not touch the stuff, but she conducted a lengthy review of all the ways I should have been able to tell that this wasn’t just a promotional; box for good ol’ Crispix, and an analysis of exactly how bad for you the candy cereal must be.
Solution: I’ll bring it to compus tomorrow for “International Talk Like a Pirate Day” and leave it in the refectory.