Tow Mater & Barn Flakes

All I'm going to say about Memphis giving Kansas the win on a silver platter is that somewhere in the world a large Mediterranean man is beside himself with joy. Moving on.

So you know how you start to sound like your friends, dress like your friends, sometimes even look like your friends? Well this just happens to be my son's very best friend in the whole wide world these days.


That's right. Mr. Tow Mater himself. And while I think Mr. Mater is a nice guy and all, I'm not sure I want him to continue hanging around my son. He's got that back woodsy hick thing going on complete with a lack of grammatical knowledge. He says, "Dag Gum!" quite a lot and my son is starting to pick it up and, while funny, I'm not sure it's what I want coming out of his mouth. Plus there is that whole tractor tipping obsession and I just don't know that I want my son learning that skill before the age of two. But what's a mom to do? I mean, they are very best buds. And Mater, well, he's definitely rubbing off on my kiddo.

Today the boy and I went to Costco and WalMart. He has a cold--AGAIN (I honestly think he catches one if it's so much as buzzing around the state of Utah somewhere)--and by the time we got to WalMart he was getting pretty whiny. I was trying everything to keep him from going completely ballistic and, apparently, my brain turned into mommy mush. I stood in the cereal aisle for a good minute and a half contemplating a box of generic barn flakes. What the heck are barn flakes? What are they doing in this aisle? I didn't even know that WalMart carried animal feed but, even so, put it in the pet section, not the cereal aisle. Those were my first thoughts. Then I thought that, barn flakes, in a box the same size as all the rest of the cereal, was maybe some kind of way to get kids, who are pretending to be farm animals, to eat their breakfast. So I stepped closer to the box. It was a very plain box, not at all enticing to the child's eye. I mumbled, "I don't get it," and walked away. However, my curiosity and confusion would not let me leave the aisle without glancing back over my shoulder for another look. There, staring back at me, was the generic box of Bran Flakes. You know, flakes made of bran. Only took me ninety seconds to read it correctly.

I wonder if any of the other people in the aisle watched me contemplate a box of bran flakes and then mumble, "I don't get it." Perhaps it was the highlight of their day, watching the crazy woman.