Mary Ann is going crazy

Things started out normally enough. Way back in the Mesozoic era when we were little single people, Mary Ann was capable of eating a bowl of breakfast cereal more or less like a normal person. Unfortunately, those by-gone days are an ever-retreating memory.

It all started in Germany, when Mary Ann found a silverfish in the last third of her bowl. I don't recall if it was alive or not. That minor detail pales beside the mental picture of her spitting out all the cereal in her mouth over a quite respectable target zone, and proceeding to dry-heave and shudder for a few minutes. Naturally, I was in 'protect and support' mode, but there is only so much that male companionship can do for one when one has almost eaten a nasty bug.

This experience left scars. For several months, Mary Ann would only eat cereal dry and out of the box after looking at each mouthful to ensure there were no bugs hitching a ride to tummy-land. Admittedly, the amazing swimming silverfish was fairly traumatic, so I accepted this as a relatively normal response.

Unfortunately, the PTSD seems to be getting worse. Every so often, she comes up with a weirdish sort of opinion, such as her violent feelings toward the character named Randall in the movie Monsters, Inc., or as it is known in our household, “Monsters, AG” (German version). Anyway, she hates him, and that's the relevant point.



I've tried to be helpful by pointing out that it could have been much worse. She could have been like this poor British guy who found one of these in his house:



According to the newspaper, it hitched a ride from South America on a fruit shipment. Hmm, enjoy that bunch of bananas there. I'm sure theres not a horrible poisons bug with huge claws ready to scamper out and attack you.

Oddly, she did not find this reasoning very soothing.

I had hoped she was moving beyond the cereal issue, until last week, when I noticed that she was eating cereal out of two bowls at the same time. Upon closer inspection, I found that she had one bowl full of dry cereal, and one bowl full of milk. She would take a spoonful of cereal out of bowl #1, and then scoop up some milk out of bowl #2, thereby creating the finished product:

1 spoonful of bug-free, highly crunchy cereal.

The poor dear even concocted a cover story. She claims that this is The One True Way Of Cereal, because each bite with be perfectly crunchy, no matter how long you take to eat it. Of course, I know that 'eat it' is code for 'minutely inspect each particular granule of cereal for lurking silverfish'.

I on the other hand, know that The One True Way Of Cereal requires that the whole bowl of cereal be left for several minutes before eating. This ensures that all crunchiness has been obliterated, thus avoiding the dreaded scratchesontheroofofyourmouth syndrome. Clearly anyone who eats cereal any other way has obviously gone round the twist.

Fortunately, I have a master plan for ensuring that these psycho-tweaks aren't passed on to the kids. For example, I have made deliberate efforts to go swimming on sparsely populated beaches while Stella looks on from the shore. I do this even though I am certain that sharks are going to attack me and eat me in front of her at any moment. Which, come to think of it, would probably be counter-productive in the phobia avoidance campaign.

At any rate, it hasn't worked yet because Stella doesn't like the swimming in the ocean. Either that or the little troll knows that I hate it and is just toying with me because she is a sadist. She's probably thinking “Hmmm, how long can I get Daddy to stay out there setting a good example and building character?”