I was going to write a post about what a bizarre, bizarre week it has been at work but at the last-minute I got lazy. Here we go.
When I was a kid, as I have mentioned before, my mother was very strict on sugar. Back in the 70’s, they hadn’t started diagnosing kids with ADD or ADHD (as far as I know). I’d had some behavioral problems at school (acting out, talking back, fights, etc) and my mother was cleanly convinced that sugar was a culprit. Either that, or she was trying to counteract my poor diet (no fault of my own) by limiting sugar around the house.
As we know now, limiting yourself from anything is a bad idea; it makes your body crave it more.
So I became a sugar fiend. Massive massive sugar fiend. If I had money, we would walk down to Cunningham Pharmacy (where the giant Kroger is now) and buy lots and lots of candy – that I obviously wasn’t supposed to be eating.
One of the side effects of the embargo on sugary substances was that none of the trashy, sugary, immensely bad for you cereals made their way in. Sure, occasionally they’d throw me a bone. I clearly remember getting a glow-in-the-dark dinosaur skeleton out of a box of Fruity Pebbles (my cereal-crack of choice) and hiding out in the closet with it.
But somehow, some way, I was tricked into thinking that I liked Kix.
Yes, Kix. (Vintage box because I couldn’t find an 80’s version)
I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t like it at some point. I can’t imagine how that even satiated my sugar craving (it didn’t). I do recall Pele appearing on a Kix box at one point, and I can’t be sure, but at some point I decided to play soccer. Probably peer pressure from all the jocks at my school that I was mysteriously forced to hang around. Not sure how that worked.
My parents dutifully got me a pair of cleats and I played my first and last game of soccer.
Turns out there’s a lot of running.