If Cheerios Were a Woman...

If Cheerios were a woman, she would be your first girlfriend from elementary school. The girl you first held hands with, and maybe, just maybe, kissed on the cheek.

Cheerios are the wholesome cereal. Cheerios were the first cereal before the other floozy cereals came and prostituted themselves with their sugars and their fancy marshmallows and fancy foldout boxes. Cheerios were the sweet girlfriend before the sex and relationships of fancier cereals.

But Cheerios are also fun and tasty. Infants often get fed this cereal in their high chairs, licking their hands and having the delightful O's stick to their palms since their motor skills aren't developed yet. Just like the first girlfriend: good for you but still fun. Cheerios aren't like the older women who nag you to lose weight or find a better job; those would be the Grape Nut women: flavorless and annoying.

Yes, the Cheerios are the innocent young girl you fell in love with when you were also young. The girl who was both sweet and good for you. The girl who first made you feel charming. The girl who first made you romantic. And, unlike any other cereal, she did it without tainting you to your upcoming life.

Just like your elementary school girlfriend with whom you did not break-up, your Cheerios relationship ended on good terms. You didn't have to have a huge fight to end things—you just said a sweet goodbye as you graduated from 6th grade. That's Cheerios.

Cheerios understand that you will always be drawn to the flash and glamor of the other cereals, but she's always willing to welcome you back with open arms if you take the time to buy her yellow box—because she's good for you like that, she's understanding like that, and she's sweet like that.

Perceived Time

The cable guy was going to show up at Grandma's house from 9-12 or 1-4. What kind of window is that? That window of time is as useful as saying, "I'm going to come on Saturday."

So I spent the day at Grandma's to help when the cable guy showed up. And it was a good thing I went. Even I, who is fairly well-versed in the audio/visual domain, was confused by the worker's broken English, heavy accent, and liberal use of cable-company jargon. But overall, the cable appointment went well.

I remember asking Grandpa Diff (my father's father) what it was like to be retired. He responded by asking me, "What did you do today?" I replied, "I woke up. Had breakfast. Watched tv. Read a little..." He quickly interrupted me, "That's what's it's like to be retired: do those things, just do them slower, and that's the whole day."

Diff's words seemed very applicable today. At Grandma's, I walked around the backyard. I pulled a few weeds from the garden. I looked at the beets that were starting to sprout from my Mother's Day efforts. I helped her with her insanely monochromatic 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle. I read some of my novel. I ate a dinner of white rice and boiled hot dogs. I watched the second half of the basketball game. And before I knew it, it was 830 at night. I don't really know where the day went.











The simplicity of the day made me feel content. It was a very calming day especially amid my current tempests. But returning home, stepping out of the tranquility and back into my busy, real world, I felt a sad for my grandma.

Stepping into her life is simple and relaxing, yes, but it is only simple and relaxing because so many of her milestones in life have already passed. She's had kids. She's retired. She's become widowed. She's paid off the house. If she came to my life, she would caught in the midst of looking for a second job to make rent, writing overdue theses, applying to university programs.

When I visit her life, I perceive the simplicity as a mini-vacation, but for her, the simplicity is the frost that accompanies the winter of her life.

And it's sad to think of it like that. But it's even more sad that there is nothing to be done except keep doing the puzzles, keep eating the hot dogs, keep pulling the weeds until "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow."

Funeral

Even the harbinger of death cannot outrun it.

I've seen this crow for four days because it died on my routine running trail. After four days of passing the bird, after four days of watching its feathers become less shiny and more frizzled, and after twenty days of still having the shovel from my Mother's Day gardening adventure in my car, I decided to give this bird a funeral.

But as simple a task as it sounds, there were many obstacles.

First, the bird died in an industrial office area with no soft dirt for a grave. I was going to dig a grave in the nearby, sparsely used flower gardens, but there were frequent security patrols of the area. So I had to put the bird in my trunk and drive it about half a mile to an area near my apartment.










Second, the bird died in a cell phone waiting area for the SJ airport. So as I as scooping up the dead bird, whose wing fell off in the process, the couple in the car behind me was very confused as to why an Asian was picking up a dead bird and putting in his trunk.











Third, when I plopped the bird into the garbage bag in my trunk, a loaf of maggots fell out of the beak and the eyes sockets and the chest cavity.

Fourth, the stench from a multi-day decaying bird filmed my car in a matter of minutes. The stench wasn't bad by itself; it smelled like really bad body odor. But it was the overall experience—the flies, the exposed flesh, the stench, the empty eye sockets—that made the smell so haunting.

But after I finished burying the bird, and after I scooped out maggots from my trunk, and after I used a whole bottle of Febreze, I realized I would do it again if I had to.

I don't know why I did it. Maybe I did it because I wanted the selfish euphoria of doing a "good deed." Maybe I did it because I was bored. Maybe I should have simply put the bird in a dumpster and been done with it.

But I think the real reason I did it is because the bird and I had a bond. I saw a piece of myself in the bird. With all the changes of life, with all the disappointments, rejections, and sadness, I don't want to be a bird kicked to the side of a busy road, feathers and beak and flesh disintegrating from neglect. I would not want to have my feathers plucked by the careless gales of passing cars. I would want to decompose in the earth; I would want to be absorbed into the soil with purpose—like life was worth honoring.

And thus I could give nothing less to the bird. I lifted it off the sterile concrete and buried it in the welcoming ground. I could have called the appropriate, faceless city agency, but the bird deserved a funeral from a friend.

How Cute is This‽

How cute is this first aid kit? It was slightly expensive at about $15 dollars, but seriously, part of the functionality of a first aid kit is placebo element. "Stop crying little child. This kit will make things all better." And this kit has a major placebo appeal.

There were other colors and themes. There was a neon green one and a pirate one, but come on now! a cute-as-hell cartoon bear with a band-aid? That trumps all.

This I'm OK! Set made me want to have kids just so I could knock them over and bust this thing out of the medicine cabinet.

Athletic Death

This is not fun for me. I don't like being up here for the Hall of Fame because at that time your basketball career is completely over. I was hoping this day was 20 more years [away] or actually go in [the Hall of Fame] when I'm dead and gone...When you get into the Hall of Fame, what else is there to do? You know, so this is a love hate thing for me...for me, I always want to be able to have you thinking that I can always go back and play the game of basketball...As long as you have that thought, you never know what can happen. You never know what my abilities can do. But am I [going back to basketball]? No. But I like for you to think that way.

~Michael Jordan on being inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame~

I feel bad for athletes when their successful careers end.

I still remember Kristi Yamaguchi winning the gold medal. She was an icon not only as an athlete, but as a Japanese-American woman visible to the American public. She was elegant and well-spoken, and I don't think she'd mind me saying I had a tiny crush on her.

But the gold medal was the pinnacle of her career. She was on Dancing with the Stars last year, but really, that was an activity for fun rather than for perpetuating her legend. And now, where do I see my role model? In weekly magazines and on the boxes for second-rate crackers.




















Michael Jordan said it well. "As long as you have that thought, [as long as you believe in the legend,] you never know what can happen." I don't want Kristi, or any athlete, to live a life of unsatisfying hermitage. But on that note, once the zenith of their careers is reached, it is sad to see heroes reduced to petty advertising as the sole means of being in the public eye.

Some people, including the athletes themselves, might argue that endorsements are good money, that we should not pity their lives after their ultimate successes, and that we should not define their entire lives by one brief period. And I agree it is unfair to view our athletes as immutable heroes. But I bet inside, somewhere and to some degree, all athletes share Michael Jordan's sentiment that the end of an athletic career is a death—a death of their own unlimited potential and a death of their attainable dreams.

Its allright, is'nt it?

I like collecting pictures of spelling/punctuation mistakes; these are just a few from my treasure trove. Now, one might view this act as elitist mockery of a third party, but I will be the first to say that I commit typos and grammar infractions all the time. Just last week, I was reviewing some of my previous posts, and I found agreement errors and homophone misuses. Everyone is allowed mistakes.

I think my frustration arises when the errors are not corrected when the respective party is aware of the crime. I'm not going to carp on every error, just the ones that have longevity.

For each of their respective purposes, these signs and posting have been/were up for very long periods of time. I mean the "comming soon" sign was up for months! The "classey lady" is a permanent storefront marquee in the Great Mall—granted the patrons of this mall aren't Santana Row people, but they still deserve correct spelling. And the "availabel" flier has been haunting my mail room for a few weeks. I find it highly unlikely that in weeks or months, the appropriate parties would not have discovered their typos. I can hear them apathetically say, "It's too late to change it now." And that apathy is fury inspiring.

Let's fix our errors when we see them. And let's help our fellow writers by constructively pointing out these errors. These mistakes hurt our credibility, and, in turn, detrimentally affect our communication.

Although I'm not really sure how to help these people. Even if I were cordial, I imagine the bag boy at Zanotto's punching me in the brain when I approach him and say, "Excuse me, but the word 'maximum' has three M's."

Hereditary Syntax

My father saw the post I made about Bert last week, and as a type of birthday present to me, he sent me a copy of an essay he wrote over 18 years ago.

I read his essay for the first time yesterday, and it is too good not to post. I found myself captivated by his prose style. After reading his essay, I found myself hoping syntax is hereditary. And so, I bring a guest writer for today.


Welcome Back, Bert (1991)

It wasn't America's Most Wanted, but it could have been.

We were ripping my car apart, my boys and me, looking for that elusive fugitive from G.'s backpack, Bert.

Bert (the Stan Laurel of Sesame Street) was given to G. by my other son D. when G. was first born. And as a son bonds to a father, Bert bonded to G. After many years, Bert has become, well, extremely loved. Faded, dirty, ripped, with no discernible facial features, save a formerly orange nose, and a straight line for a mouth, twisted slightly at the corners. Funny what love can do to you.

Everyone used to have something like Bert. The old blanket, the old pillow, the old rabbit or the old doll. For me, a blue blanket with blue satin binding. And as it was for each of our treasures, Bert has become totally indispensable.

Bert has been lost many times—in fact, many times a day. He was once saved after being thrown in a trash can in Japantown. He spent the night at a Taco Bell. He was given a special ride to the airport by my sister when we rushed off to catch a plane without him. But always, always, he returned.

In the two years I have been separated from my boys, I have not had to locate Bert as often as I used to. But even on part-time duty, I had built the reputation of being able to locate Bert in any setting, under any conditions, within two minutes. My secret, I would tell G., quelling tears with bravado, was to think like Bert, and figure out where he was hiding. And however that happened, it would happen.

It was my fatherly power, a gift, duty and responsibility. It also made me a little indispensable as well. After all, a divorced, absentee dad needs every edge he can maintain. Among all the things I could no longer give G., this was still a shining star skill.

But today, it was different. He was nowhere. Not in the house. Not in the car. And the gnawing possibility of an outside abduction became stronger and stronger. So I made the obligatory calls to each of the five places we stopped earlier this afternoon, looking for any trace of the errant Bert. No luck.

At first, G. seemed brave, and a little angry. At me, for failing to think enough like Bert today, and at himself, for having lost him. The search began with an air of sport and adventure. But toward 8:30, having searched a park in the dark in vain, adventure had turned into calamity, and the mischievous grin transformed into tears.

I and my ex-wife J. have been trying to wean G. from Bert for the last two years. A lot for maturity reasons. A lot for self-preservation. After all, how many trash cans in parking lots do you want to commit yourself to examining? We returned to J.'s house, two vanquished warriors. G. may have lost Bert, but it was on my watch. And we were all faced with the harsh reality was that G. would have to go solo tonight.

G. and I went through the obligatory lessons, about responsibilities, about losses, about new bondings and new beginnings, about growing up. I tried to convince him of the temporary comfort of one of his other friends, his chipmunk with the T-shirt, the birthday bear, the bee hiding in his own winged cocoon. He wasn't buying this temporary idea too well. Not here tonight might as well have meant not here forever. This might be the time that Bert would not come back. G. was grasping at the reality of a separation forever, even if I couldn't.

As he lay down on a dinosaur pillow, bee under his arm, he told me he missed Bert. So did I. I wasn't any more ready for this than he. The sixth sense a father should always have was gone. No magic, just the comfort I could give with words and a hug.

As I left their house for mine, I thought about how much I always hated losing all my valuable little things, wishing they would magically come back. For me, it was always pens, and key chains. I knew that there was, somewhere in the world, a pile of things that I had dropped, lost, misplaced, or left behind. Someday, always someday, there would be a large homecoming for me. But I refused to believe that the things wouldn't somehow show up.

Then, as today, there was a lesson about coming to grips with losses, about growing up. It was always a tough one.

Today, it was G.'s. And I felt peculiarly responsible for the whole thing. We were both too young for this. He failed as a son, me as a father.

After returning home, my friend R. presented me with the unexpected—the prodigal Bert. While straightening the bed, she had pulled down the sheets, only to find Bert staring back at her. Magically returned to us, exactly where G. had forgotten him, precisely where I couldn't find him.

Bert went right back under G.'s arm the next day. I breathed the sigh that only guilty fathers sigh. And I rued the day that Bert would be lost again, when even R. won't find him.
Oh well, we can grow up some other day.