Empty #socs

Stream of Consciousness Saturday 1 Minute

You may all breathe a sigh of relief: I have no intention of discussing eliminatory functions, tempting though it might be.

Perhaps one of my Canadian readers could tell me who this is. I’m going to steal the line, “ahh, gum drops!”

We had an unwritten rule at our house when I was a kid: never be the one who finishes off anything, like a box of cereal. As a result, our pantry was full of cereal boxes with about a half-inch of cereal left in them, not enough to fill a bowl. Dad got up one morning and, seeing all the almost-empty cereal boxes in the pantry, decided to empty them all into one box and inform the three of us that he wasn’t buying any more cereal until we finished that box. It was actually kind of cool: a bowl might have contained Wheaties, Sugar Frosted Flakes, Sugar Smacks, Rice Krispies, a Lucky Charm or two, etc.

A few years ago, we had a movie theater size box of Dots sitting in a cabinet. If I remember correctly, we had bought two, I ate one, and Mary had stuck hers in a cabinet for "later," which in her case could have been an hour later, a day later, a week later, a month later, a year later, a decade later… Anyway, I thought it would be okay if I took a couple… a couple of days later, I took a couple more… well, before I knew it, there was just one Dot left. When Mary discovered this, she was mad at me for eating her Dots, but she couldn’t fathom why I left one in the box (she swears it was a black one, except the black ones are called Crows and as far as I knew they never mixed them in). That’s when I told her the cereal story…

Linda is the "hostess with the mostest" for Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Now a word about Kent filter cigarettes. Kent, with the Micronite filter, refines away harsh flavor, refines away hot taste!

Published by John Holton

Internet disc jockey, lover of old TV (especially the commercials), inveterate wise guy.

Published

34 thoughts on “Empty #socs”

  1. Pingback: The Post-Birthday Week That Was – The Sound of One Hand Typing

  2. That’s funny about the cereal and my mom would have done the same thing but we always emptied the boxes.
    I think of my brother who loves beer from as far back as I remember. We had our bedrooms downstairs and there was a beer fridge in the hallway. Once, I caught my brother taking a beer and he explained to me that after a hard day at school, I think he was 12, he needed a beer to chill. I understood but asked how he keeps it from mom and daddy. He told me the empties are under his bed. He couldn’t put them back in the case because they would see it. Mom never drank and daddy liked his shots of whiskey so they never looked in the fridge unless company came and one wanted a beer. Well, time passed and my brother and I were eating cereal. Mom was vacuuming downstairs and she stopped the vacuum. There was silence and we both looked at each as my mom yelled, “Baron!”. “Run!!” I told him and Baron was off like a shot. He never thought mom would pull out the bed to clean. She saw all the empties…lol. I don’t know what happened after that. I have to ask my brother if he remembers.

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  3. We try to buy more than enough so as not to have to decide who gets the last one. We tend to save the last one for each other. Then we forget and have to throw it out. I like the cereal-mixing idea.

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        1. I think Dig ’em is still the spokesfrog for Honey Smacks. I go back far enough that I remember when Quick Draw McGraw was the spokestoon (though Baba Looey was nowhere to be found).

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  8. You ate the emergency dots?! We had that rule that you had to ask before taking the last of something which meant you might have to share. The combined cereal sounds delicious. Thanks for not writing about eliminatory functions.

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  10. Eating the last of something is a huge deal in our house, not so much for me but for my husband. If we finish something without making sure there is a replacement he gets crazy. I think it comes from when he was younger and his dad wouldn’t let him have a second helping of something. Now he wants to make sure he always has enough.

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  11. We had the same principle. 8 people could be served a breadbasket containing 6 rolls and there’d always be one left. We had happy backyard birds and many races to the table. My Italian grandmother was always satisfied that we always seem to have “just enough”. LOL

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  13. Odd kind of rule, isn’t it? We had the same rule. At the table you shouldn’t take the last bit of anything, as it’s not polite. That went for anything else too, like you say. Fun idea to mix the cereals! :)

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