The Cereal Deviant

Mike says I've already written about this, but I have no such memory, so I am writing it anyway.

I am married to a cereal deviant. He seems like a pretty swell guy from the outside what with his boyish good looks and green eyes. But don't be deceived. At home, he regularly breaks the universal rules of cereal eating.

You see, I am a Closer. I like things to be close-ended, not open-ended. In life, I take great satisfaction in starting something and finishing it, like a book that I read all the way through not because it is good, but because I finish what I start. (Deviant Mike, as a side note, starts books by reading the last page.)

My neat and tidy finishing habits carry over to my cereal eating. In my universe, you buy one box of cereal. You eat it. You finish it. You throw it away. You buy another box of cereal. Neat and tidy, no?

In Mike's universe, he buys 10 boxes of cereals. He opens each one and nibbles here and there like a little mouse. If he has only four boxes of cereal in the pantry, he will announce in despair that he has no cereal to eat. If there is a box of cereal that he opened but that he's just not feeling in the mood for anymore, he will simply let it sit there, uneaten, until it stales. You see, he is a Cereal Deviant.

And, I, Closer that I am, must come behind this nibbling mouse of a spouse and close all his unfinished business. I feel compelled to finish the cereal boxes that he has opened and moved on from like a 14-year-old boy with a crush, and eat it until every last bowl is gone, becuase there must be order in this world! Without me, the pantry, nay, the universe, would be a world of chaos.

But Mike commits further and worse acts of Cereal Deviance. Just this morning, he indulged in his fiendish activity. When the box of cereal gets to the very bottom, Mike won't finish it. He will let it rot before he will eat the last bowl of a box. Like a fastidious shiba inu, he doesn't want to get any little crumbs on his whiskers. So the box will sit there uneaten, until Vacuum Wife comes and cleans up after him, eating the last half servings in all the abandoned boxes.

This morning, there was one box of Great Grains sitting with one perfectly good serving left in it and one new, unopened box. (He likes to be prepared.) And what does he do? Ignores the old box and opens the new one! Fiend! Foul Harbinger of Chaos! When I point out his dastardly actions, he simply smiles a boyish grin at me and shrugs his shoulders in mock innocence.

Then I proceed to have a breakfast of crumbs, one last half serving of Honey Bunches of Oats that the Little Prince refuses to eat and one half serving of Great Grains. Someone has to pick up after the Cereal Deviants of the world.

Mike says that no one will sympathize with me, but will merely think I've gone mad in writing this post. But I ask that you fellow Closers will stand up for Cereal Justice and stop the Harbingers of Chaos in this world!