Cereal Box Toys

Happy Father’s Day. I just wanna give a shout out to my pops, let him know that I love him.

Here’s a little something-something I wrote last summer, about my dad. It’s called Cereal Box Toys.

The most exciting thing about eating cereal when I was four years old was stuffing my hand deep into a box of Frosted Flakes and fishing out a cool toy. Spinning tops, glow-in-the-dark rings, squirt guns. Action figures.

My favorite were these gooey octopus thingies that would go splat! on the walls if I threw them. It was extremely cathartic.

One night my dad caught me with my arm inside a cereal box. It was so embarrassing because I kind of wanted him to think I was mature. But for whatever reason, my dad understood my situation and simply asked what I was doing. I pulled my arm out and replied that I just wanted the toy. My dad stared at the box curiously, looking extremely wise with a cigarette in his mouth, and told me there was no toy.

This infuriated me because he was implying that I was stupid. I pointed at a picture of a toy car on the bottom right corner of the box and my dad explained to me some nonsense like I had to mail something in to get the toy car. My dad pointed to some writing explaining the promo, but I didn't know how to read yet. It really didn't matter because I thought this was all bullshit. I decided to throw a tantrum and play with my toys in the closet in order to cool off.

Fifteen minutes later it was all forgotten, as I was walking my other toy cars up and down the hallway. Vroom, vrooom!! I passed by the kitchen and saw that my dad had spilled out the entire contents of the cereal box onto a cutting board. “See!” he said. “No toy.” I just nodded and continued playing. My dad looked at the pile of cereal on the cutting board, and sighed in a very pissed off way.