By the way guys, sorry about the double post this morning!

Does that sound like a pretty complete breakfast to you?

It does to me (though I’d rather see “fruit” in place of “juice”) – and here’s the funny thing.   It seemed that way to me as a kid, too.

I remember seeing breakfast cereal commercials when I was six years old or so that trumpeted about how some or another sugary cereal was “part of this complete breakfast with toast, eggs, juice, and milk” and thinking, “Toast, eggs, milk, and juice?  That sounds pretty complete by itself.  What’s the cereal for?”

This wasn’t because I was some kind of super – genius (though I’ll halt take that accolade if it’s on offer!   :D).   It was because my parents had taken time to instill a healthy skepticism about commercial advertisements (and nobody does skepticism like six-year-olds, who are just discovering that how things are and how things seem can be very different).  It was because we talked about nutrition at home, in school, and even at church.

Perhaps most importantly, though, it was because I had recently eaten a breakfast of toast, milk, eggs, and juice, and by the end of it, I was stuffed.  Where, I reasoned with the irrefutable logic of the very young, was the cereal supposed to fit – literally?

So, in short, I discovered a valuable piece of insight mostly because I loved poached eggs on toast and someone (either Mom or Grammy) made them for me as a treat that morning.  I realized that in the “part of this complete breakfast” equation, the cereal was basically extra. The breakfast was fine without it.

I’m not sure, dear reader, what I hope you’ll take away from this post (which is neither about bicycles nor about ballet, though it is about food, which quite literally fuels both of those passions).  I don’t mean it as a criticism of individual choices.   I suspect you’re probably already the kind of person who makes that kind of connection.

If anything, I see it as the opposite of that – I happened to be privy at a useful moment to a bunch of information that led me to a sort of breakfast – related epiphany: that cereal was the dessert part of a complete breakfast.   I was able to apply this idea because my family ate desert maybe once a week or so, not with every meal.  I had a context that allowed me to just the information at hand in my own best interests.

It sort of worries me that, as a country, we largely seem to lack that skill (critical reasoning deficits are disturbingly common at school, too – and I’m a university student).   It seems a little baffling.

I don’t have any prescriptive advice, here, or anything.   I’m sort of just thinking out loud.  I’m also wondering how we reached this pass (and I find it interesting that people in the political arena seem to reflexively blame the folks on whichever side of the aisle is opposite their own).  Like, I don’t think we’d have stuck around this long as a nation if we weren’t, in years past, pretty good at critical thinking about practical matters (and creative thinking).

I will resume my normal bikes-and-ballet related blathering shortly.  For now, this is what’s on my mind, via some experiences I’ll discuss at a later date.

Til then, keep the bottom side down 🙂