Weird but true: Cereal's freakishly popular around here

A house full.

They plow through the crunchy stuff like a Real Housewife of Beverly Hills spending alimony money. A box will be thoroughly decimated in a day or two. Tops.

It’s the breakfast of choice and, routinely enjoyed as an afternoon snack.

Cereal is so revered that an entire shelf of our room-enough-for-one-butt-only pantry is dedicated to the stuff. In fact, there’s even an auxiliary shelf up high for the overrun.

So you can imagine how a sale — buy one, get one half-off — goes over around here. It’s enough of a deal to make Big Daddy drag himself out of the house on a Sunday morning to accompany me on my weekly Target trek. Whee — a family outing!

B.D. grabbed a cart and went one way, kids trailing behind, while I took one of my own and went the opposite direction.

I should explain that I h-a-t-e buying cereal for him. It is a soul-sucking experience. He is veeeeerrry specific in his grain consumption and when I am entrusted with this very important task, I invariably do something wrong like buy cinnamon-coated Colon Blow when I should have purchased the cinnamon INFUSED kind. Or, I think it’s OK to swap the cheaper, off-brand Honey Bunches of Oafs for the actual Post label Honey Bunches of Oats. Not OK.

He filled his cart like a contestant on a game show with only 30 seconds and an unlimited budget while mine contained.... dental floss. We caravaned up to the cash register, cart brimming with so much cereal, it prompted a text from a mom I know through school.

“Did I just see you at Target buying 102 boxes of cereal?!”

Oh, the shame.

We got plain Cheerios, Apple Cinnamon Cheerios, Raisin Bran, Raisin Bran Crunch, five different kinds of granola, Oatmeal Squares, Go Lean Crunch!, Go Lean Crisp! (not sure why these skinny cereals elicit such excitement), Great Grains cranberry-almond crunch, blueberry-flavored Mini-Wheats, strawberry-flavored Mini-Wheats. I counted it all up — not quite 102 boxes. More like 20. And not a single box, much to my dismay, of Cocoa Pebbles, my preferred cereal of choice. Every now and then, I’ll indulge — I stash the box in my special hiding spot in the little pantry and consume it there, too, lest a child see me and subsequently want to share MY cereal.

So, once again, all is right with the world because the designated cereal shelf is full, as is the auxiliary shelf above it.

Perhaps the stuff’ll last a month. Maybe. If we’re lucky.