Am I the only one who thinks that Lucky Charms is perfectly ratioed? Apparently there are entire businesses and social networks dedicated to the poo-pooing of the TOBs (“toasted oat bits") and lamenting the tragedy of wasting any oral real estate or chewing energies on something so bland and uninspiring as a non-marshmallow.
I am staunchly anti the anti TOB movement (which I suppose makes me Pro Oat) -- not because I hate rainbows and not because I find it ridiculous that people form organizations based on the poo-pooing of a shapeless grain. I am opposed to the concept of an bland-less cereal on a philosophical level. I see the entire situation as a metaphor, or perhaps a manifestation of a fundamental flaw in modern society’s understanding of Happiness. (Yes, I took it there.)
In cereal and in life, I believe that Happiness is comprised of exactly 90% normal and 10% magical deliciousness.
I spent the morning of my 25th birthday slurping down a bowl of Lucky Charms while ruminating on this thought and feeling nostalgically grateful for all the little toasted oat bits in my life. E.g.:
- Every weekday, I perform the same morning choreography: I hoist my bike to my shoulder with my right hand and step precariously down the narrow semi-spiraling staircase of my apartment, grabbing my helmet and keys hanging from the hooks on the wall with my left hand. I take 8th to Folsom to 5th to Bryant -- pedaling in between each of the seven traffic lights at the precise speed (perfected after a year of practiced study) that allows me to roll through all of them without ever coming to a full stop.
- Every weekday afternoon, I eat my lunch out of the same giant red bowl. Whatever food I scavenge — burritos, sandwiches, popcorn, leftover pasta -- gets dissected, anatomized, and tossed with spinach in the red bowl.
- Every Tuesday -- regardless of rain, wind, work deadlines, feelings of bloatedness from too much lunch in the red bowl -- I go to track practice at Kezar stadium. Afterwards I go to the same dive bar with my teammates and I drink one $2 Tecate with lime from Red The Bartender who puts it on the counter when he sees me walk in with a “Here ya go, sweetheart.”
- I listen to the same few hundred songs on my iPod (mostly from mixed CDs that were burned between 2000 and 2009).
- I wear the same two jackets — a purple parka and a red hoodie — pretty much every day.
- I make a cup of tea every night before bed.
These rituals are my daily staples. They are the hearty toasted oats of my life. It is their mundaneness that makes them substantive. It is their unremarkability that make the occasional pot-of-gold moments worth savoring. My life is comparable to Lucky Charms in many ways -- namely the part about being Charmed and Lucky. I try not to take for granted the fact that, relative to many people in the world, my life is a bowl of just marshmallows.
But that said, in bizzarro San Franciscoland where the tap water is tainted with overachiever hormones that turn the youth into facial-hairless CEOs in their 20s, even my charmed life can seem subpar. At age 25, Mark Zuckerberg had 300 million users on Facebook. The 24-year-old who invented Snapchat is already worth $1 billion.
Of course I can always remind myself that at 25 Warren Buffett was a salesman in Omaha, Tina Fey was working at the YMCA and Tim Allen was arrested for toting cocaine through an airport. And, to be honest, I could give a damn about what anyone was or was not doing at my age. There will be Mark Zuckerbergs ahead of me and Tim Allens below me at every stage of life.
If I can have marshmallow days for 10% of the rest of my life, that’s enough for me. And the fact that I can still eat Lucky Charms for breakfast as a 25-year-old bodes well.
(For the record, my birthday was a weeks-worth of pot-of-gold moments.)
