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Tales from Exit 22 by Al Batt

I was traipsing down the magically delicious aisles of a grocery store.

That’s the breakfast cereal aisle.

I used to like breakfast cereals with things like a frogman in the box. “They swim… They dive… They surface… All by themselves!” There were three U.S. Navy Frogmen available in boxes of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes and Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes: an obstacles scout, a demolitions expert and a torch man. “Fuel them up with high pressure propellant and WHAM… they dive into action to carry on underwater demolition duties.” The high-pressure propellant was ordinary household baking powder placed in the foot of a frogman. And the Official Jack Webb Dragnet Whistle in a box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes that made a shrill police sound. My favorite was the collection of baseball cards printed on the backs of Post Cereals boxes. I used the good scissors with rapturous glee to clip the trading cards with images of stalwarts such as Al Kaline, Ernie Banks, Don Drysdale, Harmon Killebrew, Warren Spahn, Brooks Robinson, Roberto Clemente and Ron Santo. I cut the cards long before the box was empty, which caused storage problems. Yup, I looked forward to those encounters with cereal boxes that were both giving and surprising.

Now I ignore the Cap’n Crunch cereal and look for a good deal on oatmeal.

There is good reading to be found on cereal boxes, particularly if you want to know how much riboflavin and thiamin you’re getting in your diet. I find comfort in knowing my body has the proper amount of riboflavin. That’s one less thing to worry about.

Anyway, I ran into a friend in that aisle who used to keep me well-fed in his restaurant. He and his wife were shopping. She was pushing the cart. The shopping cart might be the most expensive contraption there is by the mile. My job when shopping is to stay by the cart. My friend said his wife had never let him push a shopping cart in a grocery store. He didn’t know why she’d imposed that restriction. I reckon the reason was that whoever pilots the cart has the power and the opportunity to move things from the shelf to the cart without justification or discussion. Perhaps he’d pile it high with Cap’n Crunch?

Back in the days when I carried my guitar in a gunny sack…no, wait, that wasn’t me. That was Chuck Berry. So, back in the days when I didn’t carry my guitar in a gunny sack and the love of my life and I were about to get hitched, we visited with Reverend Fick for premarital counseling. We got to the church early because we’d left our homes early. We had to. Because of my unreliable car, the miles were longer than they are today. The instruction Reverend Fick provided was helpful, but it didn’t cover some important things, like the side of the bed each spousal unit sleeps on. You pick a side and you’re stuck with it for the rest of your married life. Thermostat control wasn’t covered, nor was the decision if we were going to be a lutefisk-eating couple or not. He didn’t touch on whether we’d be a one-breakfast cereal family or we’d eschew sharing and glom onto individual breakfast foods. The reasons for many of those decisions we made have dissolved in the ocean of time.

The good reverend told the story of the time his new bride washed his precious smoking pipes in soapy water. To him, his pipes were well-caked. To her, the pipes were foul-smelling. She wanted to surprise him. He was surprised but held his anger. He offered that as good counsel, stressing that most of the things that anger us aren’t worth the anger. That was tattoo-worthy when tattoos were as scarce as hen’s teeth.

Reverend Fick didn’t even warn me that my wife would one day start every conversation she had with me by saying, “Are you listening to me?”

Perhaps my friend wasn’t listening as a newlywed when his wife asked him who should drive the shopping cart in a grocery store?

I hope he gets to push a cart.

Maybe he could toss a box of Cap’n Crunch into it.

Al Batt’s columns appear every Wednesday in the Tribune.