What Oatmeal Taught Me

If you combine three cups of water, one-and-half cups rolled oats, a pinch of salt, and heat, you get oatmeal. This warm breakfast mush defined my childhood mornings. My inclination towards oatmeal varied with age. As a baby, I'm sure I enjoyed it greatly. I probably even liked the powdered cardboard form. But as I grew in height and stature and opinion, oatmeal began to be a battleground. "Eat your oatmeal," said my mother. "No. I don't like it," I said. What had been a favorite food was now an insult to my 7/8/9/10-year-old taste buds. But as much as I resisted, the oatmeal persisted in being our usual breakfast food. My dear mother, perhaps remembering her own childhood oatmeal experience, tried hard to make it appealing. Bananas, apples, raisins, cinnamon, peanut butter, pumpkin pie filling, and once even chocolate, were added to the oatmeal. But still I persisted in my dislike. (I'm very stubborn. And just for the record, chocolate in oatmeal is gross.)

As the years came and went, the oatmeal stayed. I ate it. Usually I whined. But I ate it. The unwritten philosophy at our table was "Eat it or starve". Having been equipped since birth with a healthy appetite, I ate oatmeal for survival reasons. Sometimes I employed various tactics to avoid and disguise the offending mush: dumping excessive amounts of brown sugar onto it, breaking two pieces of toast into it, hiding it by smoothing it around the edges of the bowl, claiming I was full after eating mostly toast, and "accidentally" flicking it out of the bowl. Obviously these were not very effective. I would either end up hungry or in trouble. By the time I was 12, I came up with a good solution: Think hard about something else, and shovel it in. It worked. I ate all my oatmeal without complaint.

Surprisingly, I've actually learned to enjoy oatmeal. In fact, it's my breakfast of choice. After fighting it for so many years, I gradually came to like it. Now, what did I learn? Some things in life are like oatmeal. They are just there and they always will be. I can whine and complain and try to get around it, but it's just there. It might look gross, but in the end, I'll probably like it. I can complain about it, or I can suck it up and shovel it in. Mmm.