I remember it being small and inside a sealed envelope. Even though it was just a small, plastic toy
in the bottom of a cereal box, it was exciting.
It wasn’t a birthday, it wasn’t Christmas, it was just breakfast, and
yet here was a present. How clever –
those cereal people. When advertising
the crunch didn’t work, or the sugar coating failed to achieve success, they
stuck in a toy. Red, plastic, maybe an
action figure or a cartoon character.
It didn’t matter. It could have
been a diagram of a sneeze and we would have been happy. It was a prize.
Being now in my 70’s, the excitement of breakfast seems to
blend into thoughts of lunch, followed by conversations of "What’s for dinner?" Thoughts of a prize have faded into the tangle
of childhood memories. The excitement is
gone. The cereal box holds only a list
of ingredients, like sugars, carbs, and chemicals you wouldn’t think should be consumed.
No surprise there.
I did see a gentleman bent over, fishing around in a casket
at the funeral home yesterday. I
wondered if he was hiding a prize inside.
Wouldn’t that be a hoot?
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