Anyone who doesn’t know how kids in your house can spread disease easily need look no furthur than the box of Cap’n Crunch with a prize inside. With six kids under the age of twelve, these prizes were a premium in our home. Most of the kids eyed an opened box of cereal carefully in the cupboard. We were looking for the star callout in the bottom corner of the box, which signaled that there was a pad of stickers or a cheaply made plastic wristwatch inside. Being the oldest boy, I usually got first dibs on the toys but had to occasionally defer to younger siblings so that it didn’t cause an uproar.
Most of the prizes in the boxes were broken and in the trash before breakfast was even over. Some watches didn’t even work at all. Still, I would proudly wear a bright yellow cartoon character with a blank lcd for days. However, the novelty soon wore off and I would wait for another fresh box to attack. The all important prize grabbing technique came after you nabbed the box.
If you were lucky enough to get the new box without another sibling noticing you had to try to get the prize discreetly. However, some boxes were just too stubborn to let you get the toy. These boxes required extra special care. First, you would squeeze the box starting from the bottom and work up so the cereal was evenly distributed vertically. Then, very carefully so as to not let the cereal settle back down, you would tip the box so you could look in. If the cereal box was too full, you were in for a very large bowl of cereal that day. Even if I didn’t like the cereal, I remember eating bowls four times a serving size just to grab the prize. After emptying the box partially you had to stare in for any sign of the magical plastic corner of the prize package. If you saw it then it was time for diving. Careful to not lose site of it, you would dive your hand in until you could grab it. Small cereals like Rice Krispies were easy to push aside, but others like Honey Combs were just tactical nightmares. This was worsened by the fact that the Honey Combs box was gigantic. Soon, everything but your head was immersed in the box, with your entire arm contaminating the entire box. But it didn’t matter, because you came out victorious. You were the proud owner of a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle press-on tattoo.
It was on one of these mornings that I noticed a new box of Cap’n Crunch. My mouth was still shredded from the last time that I ate them, but I wasn’t interested in eating them. No, this time there was a very different prize offered on the front. It was foreign paper currency. Now, most kids might not find this very cool, but I enjoyed reading encyclopedias straight through. So, while a few siblings noticed, my excitement over the prize won over. Soon I was holding a fresh Chinese bill, worth probably somewhere in the vicinity of 5 cents. By the end of breakfast the bill had been worked over and looked like I had owned it for weeks. I was so excited about my new prize I decided to ask my mom if I could take it to my kindergarten class. She agreed and I walked happily to school with my new riches in hand.
Anyone who knows me will attest to the fact that I indeed have a mouth, and that it is open a lot. This was no different then. By the time an hour had gone by in our class, I had shown every student my chinese bill more than once. One kid tried to take the money, but I think the look of death I gave him probably dissuaded him from keeping it. The day was going perfectly until reading time came. After listening to the story for at least 5 seconds, I began to play and show my money to the seated audience again.
“Trent,” my teacher said sternly. “You need to put that money away right now or I will take it away.”
Of course I did not acknowledge this, because of course there is no way that an adult would take away the most precious possession of a five year old. So, I continued showing off the money until my teacher got up from her reading seat, took my money and placed it in her drawer. While I pleaded to have it back, there was no changing her mind. That money never felt my hand again, and Mrs. Smith will always be the woman who took my Cap’n Crunch prize. It was a long walk home.
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