Cereal Killer

Last night, I spilled an entire box of cereal on the kitchen floor. Oh, wait, let me clarify. An entire box. As in, the whole thing. The whole, bloody box! It was a box of my new favorite cereal which has a terrible, unfortunate name: Gorilla Munch. First of all, I do realize that it's technically a kids' cereal, hence the goofy name. Second, I won't get started (again) on how much I dislike certain food/eating description words -- words like munch, crunch, chewy, tangy, succulent, juicy -- since I do realize we've got cereal to talk about here.

So, Gorilla Munch. It's a delicious, corn-based cereal that I discovered during my recent gluten-free days, and its shape is tiny balls, just like Kix cereal. When one drops them on the kitchen floor, they don't just plop down like a cornflake or a lump of shredded wheat. They roll. They roll everywhere. Under the dishwasher, under the stove, under the refrigerator, under the hutch, everywhere. Somehow, in mid-air, they all develop a tiny Gorilla Munch brain, and this brain tells them to roll away in a million directions and land in all the hardest-to-reach locations, so as to make the dropper really, especially cranky. Thus, I spent a portion of the evening on my belly, poking around under the appliances with various kitchen tools. It wasn't just cereal under there, I'll have you know. There was an alarming amount of dirt, dust, and odds and ends, which made me feel like a terrible housekeeper, while the cereal spill made me feel both clumsy and really wasteful. I suddenly hated this cereal.

The whole experience had me chanting in my head, don't cry over spilt milk, don't cry over spilt milk, because the reality was that I wanted more than anything to cry. Then, of course, Matthew appeared in the kitchen as soon as he heard the sound of the eight million tiny cereal balls hit the ground, followed by my low, sad, whimpery groan-moan. In his standard, cool-as-a-cucumber style, he managed to simultaneously reassure me, tell me I definitely wasn't dumb, sweep up the cereal, and listen carefully as I shrieked out, I just cleaned this floor this morning! I hate this cereal! I need something! I need a tool! Hand me a tool! A spatula! Not a plastic spatula! A metal spatula! No! Not that one! That one! I have to get these OUT of here! Okay, so I'm pretty certain I wasn't actually shrieking, per se, but I am nearly certain I had, you know, a tone.

My urgency did at least result in a very quick clean-up job, though, so in mere moments I was standing on a clean floor, shoving the box of cereal back in the cabinet, too miserable to even look at it, let alone eat it. I ended up eating another kind of cereal, which is sort of funny, now that I'm thinking about it. Gorilla Munch is out of my life, I thought. I held the new box of Puffins cereal with a death grip, though, determined to avoid a rehash.

When I was little, my grandparents had a little shaggy black dog named Alfie, who was the apple of their eye. He was a spunky little dog, and while he mostly ate dog food, he occasionally would get a special treat. My grandfather would get a certain gleam in his eye, and he'd head over to the pantry, with me trotting along after him. He'd go for the orange box of cereal -- the box of Team. Do you remember this cereal? It was flakes; a wheat, rice, oat, and corn cereal made by Nabisco, with a picture on the box of sliced bananas on top of the cereal. The crinkle of the bag would send Alfie over, because he knew what it meant. My grandfather would take out a handful of cereal in his big, sturdy hand, and we'd poke through it to find the biggest flake. I'd get to feed Alfie that flake, and he'd take it from my fingers with his gentle tongue, then my Papa and I would eat the rest of the handful while Alfie waited patiently to see if there'd be more.

Team Flakes was my grandparents' favorite cereal for years, and I remember that orange box being a part of their pantry for the duration of my childhood. It would live on that shelf that was at eye level for me, right next to the ketchup and mustard -- even when I was young, I was both confused and delighted that the condiments didn't live in the refrigerator at my grandparents' house. Mysterious! Unusual! Warm condiments wouldn't kill me, after all! I always felt so devilish when I used them, and I'd often find excuses to consume them. I'd put the mustard on crackers, or on pieces of cheese, all in a quest to feel that liberation.

To me, the condiments weren't the only thing that had an unusual location in my grandparents' house. The canned goods lived in neat rows on the basement shelves, candy bars were stored both in the freezer and in the stereo cabinet, and nuts were in a bowl on the coffee table, surrounded by an array of vicious-looking tools (one of which once made its way into my palm while I was trying to dig out my own nutmeats). Plus, there was never any food out on the counter. Ever. Unless we were in the process of cooking or eating, the counter tops were food-free. No fruit bowl, no stray vegetables. Very occasionally, there would be a bag of bread (always Roman Meal bread, with the twist-tie twisted very tight), but I think it was there by accident, or maybe because I left it there. I laugh now, as I think of the foods currently on my kitchen counter, a scene that would give my grandmother a heart attack -- a twenty-five pound bag of brown rice that is too big to fit anywhere else, bread, tortillas, a bowl of kiwifruit, a bunch of bananas, butter softening so that it can be baked with, a box of cereal, oh! and not to mention the nine bottles of oils and vinegars, the honey, the salt and pepper, the hot sauce, and the sugar. Sheesh. I know it sounds like a frightening mess, but it's not, I swear!

But back to the cereal. Team cereal has, of course, since disappeared, so I did a little bit of research to find out what happened. It sounds like there are some really distraught folks out there who are completely devastated by the loss of Team. Seriously, entertain yourself by googling what happened to Team Flakes? and you'll see what I mean. Not only do people love and miss this cereal in vast ways, but they also seem willing to do anything in order to get it to come back. I have a feeling that Kraft Foods (who now owns Nabisco, which made Team) has received a few warehouses full of Team Mail, and I love to think about the kind of things that people might say in order to convince Kraft to bring about a Team resurgence. This cereal shaped my life, I've read on the Team comment pages, my life has gone downhill since Team was taken away! And has anyone gone to the pun yet? Come back and join the Team! Or, my favorite joke, which is certainly the wittiest, You'll pay for this, you...you....cereal killer!

Its funny but also so lovely to me, the way that people react to food, and the intense nostalgia that people feel when a part of their culinary past is taken away. As soon as I start to laugh about it, though, I stop, because I realize that I am one of those people. I wax nostalgic about all of my food memories, and I file them away and store them in my heart, just like so many people do. The difference, I suppose, is that a loss of a food doesn't leave me angry or violent like half the folks out there mourning the loss of Team cereal, or Quisp, or Jell-O pudding pops, or candy cigarettes. Granted, I grieve, too, but the fact that some foods don't actually exist anymore makes my memories glimmer a little bit more. It makes the memories more ethereal, more special. And, I suppose that one day, when they stop making Gorilla Munch, I'll manage to straighten out all my woes and residual angst from that big spill and I'll come back around, bemoaning the loss, writing letters, posting my comments, expressing my misery, and mourning with the rest of them.