When Breakfast was Good and Junkie

Breakfast was so wonderous when I was a kid -- not nutritionally, of course. But it did what it was supposed to do: jazz up our little-kid bodies with plenty of good, organic sugar, fresh from the ground, so we'd have the "Go Power" to charge through school or -- more importantly -- summer vacation. We all knew that sugar was rocket fuel that had but one downside (i.e., cavities, which we could easily fight with Stripe toothpaste), so providing we brushed, our moms were all for us shoveling bowls of sugary goodness down our eager little gullets. 

 And one of my favorite memories was Rice Krinkles solidly encased in brain-waking sugar. As you may have guessed, this was before I discovered the ultimate in sucrose-powered cereal, Cap'n Crunch. I long ago signed up as a lifelong member of the Cap'n's crew. But back then, after a bowl or two of Rice Krinkles (depending on how many cartoons were on), I'd hide down in a ditch by the road with my best friends David Wood and Charles Nasser to spend the day pelting the cars of random drivers with hand grenade dirt clods. And then run away.