Lock this topic! (By New Year's Day!)

[Lady Amber]

Forsooth.

[Russa Nodrey]

Yeah.

[The Skarzs]

Uh-huh.

[The Witessss]

Hey, guys, what do you think about bananas and oatmeal?

Spoiler

They are gross

[close]

[Delthion]

But I love bananas!

[Hickory]

That reminds me of this time (I was about 10 years old) in August. It was the first day of school, and despite my natural displeasure at needing to rise at a relatively early time of day, I was eager to shovel down breakfast and proceed to school to meet the rest of my friends. However, in that particular month, I had been seized by a mad desire to consume oatmeal (Cream of Wheat was no longer sufficient to quench my desire for tasteless breakfast food, and the immense pot of steel-cut oats my father typically made was repulsive at the time), which meant that, of course, I would require a satisfyingly large bowl of it on that particular morning.

Lucky for me, my mother had risen before me and had put on a pot in which she was currently making a large amount of the mouthwatering meal. Although I would have been content to simply drown the provided bowl of oats in maple syrup and eat my gooey, simple breakfast, my mother had other plans. Little did I know that she had begun a strict dieting regimen the month prior, and in conformance with the protocol she had set in place, I would need to make my oatmeal a good deal healthier. The bottle of maple syrup was replaced with a hefty bag of walnuts, and the fridge door was thrown open to reveal scores of enormous, farm-grown strawberries nestled in their plastic containers, ready to be diced by the razor-sharp kitchen knife and chucked into the bowl of oatmeal. I watched in rapidly-growing horror as my mother began this terrifying process of "improving the nutritional quality", as she so often called it.

Frozen by shock, I was helpless as the bowl began to overflow with heaps of fruit, made worse by the extrication of a massive, foot-long banana from the fruit basket. The pale yellow fruit was sliced and thrown in with the rest, permanently ruining the once great meal. My father had long since abandoned me for his yogurt and granola, most likely viewing my mother's unintentional punishment as retribution for my previous distaste for the steel-cut oats. Soon, the bowl of oatmeal – probably more fruit than oats – was set in front of me on the table, and I was set to the task of eating all of it. The fruit, all of it, was not yet ripe, and the oats had gotten lukewarm by the time my mother had finished her modifications, meaning that the breakfast I had first dreamed of had lost even the base allure of warmth.

By the time I had finished eating the tough, cold meal, my sister had come downstairs and, sensing my predicament, made a beeline for the toaster. To her disappointment, my mother snatched the packet of cream cheese – the standby in our normal breakfasts – out of her hand and replaced it with a shallow dish of cold, brick-like butter.

"If you're going to eat toast, at least avoid overeating dairy," she said, the words positively terror-inducing to my sister, who had subsisted on a breakfast diet consisting only of toast with a rotating list of toppings ranging from peanut butter to Nutella. My father, scraping the remnants of his deep bowl of granola, couldn't help but chuckle at our predicament. Little did he know that he would soon be entrapped by my mother's unrelenting diet reforms – but that's a story for another day.

[Delthion]

That's quite a tale!

[The Witessss]

Bblecckk! yeah, that sounds like pure torture. luke-warm oats with unripe fruits, namely the dreaded banana. Del, I thought you only ate peoples, not bananas.

[Hickory]

I happen to be reading David Sedaris's Me Talk Pretty One Day at the moment, so I can't help but attempt to write my own memoirs in a similar, humorous style. Of course, this particular story is all fabricated (though it is entirely possible).

Also, I had previously written a fictional story in this same topic about a piece of pork stuck between my teeth, so I figured it was worth it to continue the trend of tall tales from my childhood.

[The Witessss]

that was fabricated?? YOU... you... yeah, whatever. I fell for it anyway. it sounded entirely real.

[Hickory]

Well, I suppose that's good, even though it wasn't my main intent in writing it. Creative nonfiction is fun to write, for sure.

[The Witessss]

it sounds like something my dad would do if my mom put us on a diet.

[The Skarzs]

That actually sounds good, Hickory, in case your fiction was based on a little bit of truth.

[Hickory]

It is true that my mother (and my father, for that matter) always insisted – and still do – that I put fruit in my breakfast meals whenever possible. The untruth is that I hated it, because I actually love oatmeal and bananas, and would gladly put them together were I to have oatmeal for breakfast at any point. The lesser untruth is also that my mother would prevent my sister from putting cream cheese on her toast – my mother does it herself, so it would be hypocritical for her to stop my sister from doing it.

[The Skarzs]

The real truth comes out.