WORM BERRIES

tuesday 5:54pm may thirteenth two thousand three

one day last week, I prepared my breakfast.

I poured my coffee and orange juice, poured my cereal, added the milk, and sat down at the table. I was looking forward to enjoying an enjoyable breakfast, while listening to the radio and watching the day's headlines.

my spoon, on its way toward the heaping bowl of special k red berries, stopped. sitting amongst the crunchy rice and wheat flakes with freeze-dried strawberries was... a dead worm.

I looked at it for a bit, thinking "maybe that's not a dead worm." but as I kept looking, I thought "no, yeah, that's a dead worm."

I started to feel a little sick. I found the number on the box and called the kellogg's corporation. someone at our friendly american cereal merchant answered the phone.

I said "there's a dead worm in my special k." at this point I was hoping to hear some shock and/or sympathy: "a WORM?!?!?! are you crazy?!?!" but instead, she unenthusiastically read her script about how she's "very sorry this happened" and blahblahblah.

between several half-hearted readings of the apology script, she asked for my address. probably so she could send me coupons for more worm cereal, I figured. just as she was done with her speech and about to get rid of me, I asked her "does this happen often?" to which she informed me that it's not unusual for dead worms to end up in any grain foods.

so yeah, that's the moral of today's story. kellogg's puts worms in cereal. and they're ok with that.

interesting postscript to this story: today I got a letter from kellogg's. and it made me laugh. I also got two coupons for fresh new boxes of worm cereal. which I'll probably end up using, because I like free stuff. even if it's worm-filled.