White Cereal Boxes

When I was in second grade, my class was sent home with an application form to give to our parents.  The dental school at the local  campus of Purdue University was soliciting subjects for a study.  Participating families would agree to eat breakfast cereal  a set minimum times per week then go to the university for regular dental check ups.

My mother signed us up immediately.  Never mind that our family did not qualify.  I did not yet have the requisite number of permanent teeth required by the study.   My father wore full dentures, top and bottom, so technically he had no teeth at all.  The eldest brothers had already left home for college and weren’t around.  So this left only my mom and my brother Ed and the minimum requirement was four family members.

My mom must have lied on the application because we were admitted to the program, and have exaggerated
 the number of family members because soon huge deliveries of cereal began to arrive at our house.  It didn’t take long for the floor-to-ceiling storage cupboards in our  mud room to be stockpiled with white cereal boxes, identical but for the  plain block lettering on the front of each, including but not limited to “Toasted Wheat,” “Multi-Grain Flakes,” and my personal favorite, “Alphabet Oat Cereal.”  No brand name was revealed, nor were the ingredients.  I don’t know how she finessed the dental check up portion of the bargain, but I pity the poor grad student who would have attempted to get in the way of my  five-foot tall
Italian mother when her mind was set on getting free convenience food. 

When my oldest brother would visit on weekends from the University of Chicago, he’d drive back with
 his sporty red Volvo stuffed so crammed with white boxes of mystery cereal that he couldn’t see out of the back.  At home between semesters from his college in Florida, my middle brother would spend inordinate amounts of time in the kitchen eating bowl after bowl of the stuff (to this day he recalls fondly “the infinite supply” of cereal at our house).

My brothers may have dug it, but I found the white cereal boxes to be one more indignity to be suffered by having been born into this particular family.  Other kids got to eat cereal with cool names like Quisp, and follow treasure maps and read comics on the backs of colorful boxes festooned with happy cartoon tigers and sea captains.  It was embarrassing when friends would spend the night only to be confronted in the morning by an uninviting Stonehenge of cereal that required explanation. 

Eventually the dental experiment came to an end and the deliveries stopped coming.  But we  had cereal to last several years, and given the amount of preservatives commonly used it made no difference.  I ate Alphabet Oat Cereal well into fourth or fifth grade.  My best guess is we were a Post cereal family, and I must say we have excellent teeth.  My mom lived to be 93 and passed away with all hers intact.


Today’s Star Wars: Working the Premier Crossword Puzzle by Frank A. Longo  in the San Francisco Chronicle’s Pink Section.  5 Down, three letter word:  Obi  __ __ __ Kenobi.