My earliest memory

As the title suggests, this is a trip back in time to the point where cognitive thoughts actually lodged themselves somewhere in the canyons of my mind (where things often go missing forever). The early memories are kind of a meld of various days, but they were in our family's first house in Drummond, Oklahoma. It was a single level, very old house. It creaked and moaned with the heat and the cold. We only lived there a year when I was a mere four years old, but it was a productive year for my imagination and my memory development. I first remember breakfast in that little house. We had a yellow Formica table and the chairs that mostly matched it. I would sit in my spot...only my spot and eat Count Chocula cereal. Count Chocula was my daily religious rite. It turned the milk a strange brownish gray color which I would finish off after the tiny morsels had all been consumed. Hail Count Chocula, full of sugar, now until the moment of my last breath. My brother Jeff, who is six and a half years older than I am, ate the most hideous cereal known to man. Frankenberry. (If you like Frankenberry, God love you. Thanks for reading this blog. But you're as crazy as my brother is.) One morning before Jeff trudged off to school, he ate a bowl of cereal which I saw him finishing as I sleepily dragged myself into the kitchen. What I didn't know was he had not only eaten all of his wretched strawberry cereal, but he had mixed in the remainder of my chocolaty manna. I picked up the box with the lovable Count on the front and shook it. Nothing. Again I shook it. Again, nothing. My brother grinned at me knowingly. At the tender age of four and a half, I snapped. I screamed bloody murder at my brother. Eyes bulging in rage, tears flowing in disappointment, feet kicking, and fists punching in frustration, I came across the table at Jeff. Usually I am fairly docile and content. Messing with my morning ritual superseded the serene boy everyone knew and loved. My mother and my brother were so shocked to see this outburst, they couldn't move. They dare not move for fear of a tiny foot connecting with a random part of their body. After the initial explosion, my mother regained composure and pulled me off of my still in shock brother. I was sent to my room for behaving like a lunatic. I was happy to go, because if I didn't have Count Chocula, then the whole day was going to be shot to hell anyway. This much I knew. It wasn't until we moved out of that house that I weaned myself off of the grasp that the Count had on me. I discovered Kix. Less sugar, aerodynamically round, and tasted great. I bid the Count farewell, but I didn't forgive my brother until years later. I bought some Count Chocula recently. It was like talking to a childhood friend after years of not seeing them. Nostalgic, yes. Awkward visit, yes. The Count and I don't see each other much anymore. Such is life.

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