Some Flaky Kind of Cereal

Gerald Slaby
12/18/07




Some Flaky Kind of Cereal

Her footie-covered feet slide down the carpeted stairs, bam-bam-bam, as her heals hit the next successive bump, going down to the kitchen below. She quickly makes her place at the breakfast table, so that she’d be the first one there.

Little twelve-year old Jessie is in a hurry to open here new box of Flaky’s Sweet Tooth Crunchies. When her mother pushed their cart down the grocery isle, Jessie saw the box with the cute little horsy and chocolate-covered balls of joy coming towards her. She wanted this cereal more than anything else in the world.

“Pleaseee mommy, can we get this”? as she held the box up to her mother’s face. Ever since she saw the ad on TV, she thought of nothing else but that little plastic animal. Jessie saved all of the others. The Barky Bart Dog, The Clever Kitty Cat doll. The only one left to get was the Hobby Horsy. But the commercial said that time was running out. She had to act fast. The offer was for ‘a limited time only.’


When Jessica tears open the box at the table and digs her hand down to the bottom of the plastic baggie holding the cereal, her face begins to light up. As she feels an even smaller baggie with her fingers, she quickly pulls it out. Doing so, she creates a great cascade of chocolate-covered rice that falls to the floor in a heap. “JESSIE!” shouts her mother. “I’ve told you about spilling cereal on the floor. Pick it all up NOW!”

Jessie’s mother tightens her belt around the white robe that she is wearing. She’s been through this, before.

Jessica doesn’t pay any attention. She frantically rips open the little bag of joy, as her father comes down and sits at the table next to her. All three start to eat breakfast, as dad scratches his ever-expanding bell and acknowledges the others’ presence with a groggy and not so cheery ‘good morning, guys.’ But dad notices the time and doesn’t stay seated long.

“I have to leave, dear. I’ll just grab some coffee.” As he heads for the door, his da”ughter says with pride, “Look daddy, I got Hobby Horsy! I finally got Hobby Horsy”!

“That’s nice, honey.” Dad kisses mom goodbye and heads for the door. “Gotta go. I’m gonna be late.”

Dad is an inventor of new cereals—the same sweet, sugary confections that his daughter likes to eat each morning. He constantly worries about the ingredients that his company puts in these cereals, but his wife doesn’t give it much thought. What could possibly be harmful in a kid’s cereal, anyway? Besides, he knows what he’s doing. He has always said that preservatives never hurt anybody. And those additives that they put in? No one has found anything bad in them, yet. But as dad was learning more of the newer chemicals at the lab, he wasn’t so sure anymore. Besides, he thought, it took scientists years to discover that CIGARETTES were deadly! Who knows what they could find in cereal? Dad decided that today was the day to find some answers.

“Phil, can I ask you something?” Dad discovers Phil, the head of the lab, sitting at his usual table. Phil has been with the corporation since its beginning. “Sure, what’s up?” replies Phil.

“I’ve been wondering,” says dad. I know that our preservatives are safe, but what if something’s in there that the company hasn’t told us about—you know, something bad? Have you heard of anything, a rumor, an interdepartmental memo, or something”?

“Well,” said Phil. “I’ve heard….just a rumor, mind you, that years ago, some of the things in these cereals are supposed to get little kids hooked into eating them. I haven’t found anything, mind you. When kids watch the commercials, a subliminal message interacts with the product’s chemical makeup and affects the neurons in their brains. It makes them bug their parents into buying our cereal—just like little robots. Yup, they’re programmed for buying! But, it’s all just a rumor, ya know…..”

Dad gives Phil a terrified look, like he’d just seen Frankenstein’s monster. He then lets out a hearty laugh. “You’re kidding, right”? Phil gives him an ‘I-don’t-know’ shrug and returns to his table. Dad immediately stops laughing, frozen with fear. ‘Hey, what if he’s right? What if he’s right and it DOES turn kids into robots”? With this new revelation, he quickly turns around and heads out the laboratory door.

After breaking every land speed record to get home, dad gives the brakes a good screech,

as he parks his overheated vehicle into the garage. As he runs into the kitchen, Jessie is there, again, eating the same box of cereal from the previous morning. “Mommy said I could have a snack!” she says.

“No!” her father says sharply. He snatches the box from her hand and jams the cardboard into the pantry with all the other cereals. “Fruit—you’re eating fruit for breakfast, from now on—snacks, too!” As Jessie starts to cry, dad whispers into his wife’s ear. “No more of this junk. I’m going to have my little girl become a robot, like all the others!”

“What?” Mother stands in the kitchen, stunned, like she just seen Frankenstein and not understanding what just happened. What is he talking about? Robots? Mom reaches into the pantry and gives Jessie something else. “Don’t worry about daddy, honey—I think he’s been working too hard. Here, let mommy give you a box of Sugar Snackies, instead.” Jessica dives into the snack.

As she puts away the box of snacks, she catches a glimpse of the side panel, containing the list of curious chemical names. As she is about to close the pantry door, the last name on the container written on it catches her attention. It was an unusual word, she thought, something that sounded strange on a kid’s snack box. It said “Internal Robo #345.

“Strange name for an ingredient. Oh well,” she says, as she watches her daughter eat. As she closes the pantry door, she wonders if this ‘robo thing’ has anything to do with what dad creates at work. She shakes her head, satisfied that nothing could be wrong and joins her daughter at the table. She eats some of Jessica’s snack as she reads the afternoon newspaper.