Silly Rabbit, that's Floor Cleaner

     It wasn’t The Rabbit’s fault. I take full responsibility. Although the sands of time can be blamed too, but blaming my age for my problems is tantamount to cursing the darkness. I should light a candle instead.

     I am getting older. I will be 46 in just a few days. Sure in Galapagos Tortoise years I am still pretty young. I the lives of a sequoia I am still an infant. But if I was a dog I’d be dead. And 46 in human years isn’t too bad if one keeps oneself healthy. I could have done better. Regardless of how old I am, I am beginning to feel some age. The vision in my left eye was something in the lines of 20/70. It’s astounding I even found The Walmart Vision Center that day to be examined. I’ve got a lot of grey hair and for some reason, hair coming off my ears more.

And I can’t eat the same way I used to. I can’t eat flautas like I wish I could. The fried tortillas screw with my digestive system and turn it to spackle. And the other night I had the chance to eat something from my past, Trix Cereal. I had a big bowl and experienced once again that joy the joy of cereal and milk. I made the mistake of looking at the ingredients and saw trisodium phosphate. I have used that to clean floors. That night I had a bellyache. The next day I ate another bowl and had an even worse bellyache that gave me bizarre dreams. I can’t imagine eating that stuff for breakfast. But I know I used to be able to eat a whole box of Trix and wash it down with beer and feel fine. That is when I was young and didn’t know what I would do with my life.

Long before I washed sugary cereal down with beer, I watched Saturday morning cartoons and the inevitable commercials that went with them. That poor Rabbit with his Sisyphean life never getting the Trix. And I have only recently realized the genius of those ads aimed at kids. The rabbit always lost, the kids always won. Eat this sugary concoction fortified with Na₃PO_4. It’s just part of a nutritious breakfast. As a kid I thought that mean eating only part of it meant you were good.

TV people know how to reach kids. They have to have studied a lot of child psychology to know how to do that. And that got me wondering, do college students start out thinking that they want to study child psychology so that they can entice kids to eat floor cleaner? Or do they begin all starry-eyed with hopes of improving the world, and somewhere along the line sell their souls?

Back to when I was eating beer and Froot Loops or Trix. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. But if you asked me, I would not have cared for a job that involved poisoning children. And here I am 20something years later with an intolerance for what I used to love and a box of trisodium phosphate on my shelf of supplies, about to turn 46, and still certain that I want to do good in the world.

It’s been a long stretch around the points of my conscious thoughts this time. From aging to cereal to floor cleaner to child psychology. I’m not sure I’ve made a point or just ranted along for 589 words.

Here is what I am sure of:

·         I am having a birthday and that is just part of what is making me feel older.

·         I am stunned by how brilliant television ads made me feel like I could be a winner if I was a kid.

·         I am not a kid any more.

·         I am not a loser for not being a kid. Kids with their iron guts can have Trix. I have a whole box of trisodium phosphate I can clean floors with and that will make me feel tons better. 

Lastly, trisodium phosphate is a legitimate food additive and not actually poisonous when used in the quantities deemed safe by the FDA. Please, no-one sue me for that.

Here’s to another year.