contributed photo Author and writer Curt Swarm reads “Never Mind the Monkey Mind” to children at the Mt. Pleasant Public Library.

I like Cheerios, the plain kind, not Honey Nut, although they’re okay. I’ve been eating 100% Whole Grain Oat Cheerios for years. Not with sugar, either. (As a kid, we were allowed one spoonful of sugar.) Cheerios is my favorite cold cereal, or food in general. It’s healthy for you, I believe. Fiber. In fact, I prefer Cheerios for breakfast over any other Ginnie delectable, like bacon-egg croissants. I’m not kidding. I can even eat Cheerios for lunch or supper, and often do when Ginnie’s gone, and feel satisfied. (It’s also a great way to get me to drinking milk–vitamin D and calcium for strong bones.) We eat so much Cheerios at our house that we buy the MEGA Size. No fooling around with the Family Size. And it’s just Ginnie and me.

It’s a great snack food for children, too, like on road trips. Put a few in a baggie and the kids are good for a couple hundred miles.

Speaking of kids, I remember one time at church, years ago, my kids told me I smelled like Cheerios. Is that good or bad?

And I love the Cheerios that are heart shaped. Oh, how cute! It makes me feel like I’m doing something special for my heart, and I am, like lowering cholesterol. I wish every box of Cheerios were heart shaped. Sadly they are not. I snapped a picture of the heart shaped Cheerios in my cereal bowl one morning and posted it on social media, with the caption, “Heart Healthy.” Someone snarked, “Cheerios are not heart healthy,” to which I replied, “Better’n sausage’n eggs!”

The other morning, Ginnie and I were eating our Cheerios when I bit down on something hard. It was kind of strange. When I bit down on it again, I searched around in my mouth and pulled out a little cube of something hard. What the hey? No big deal. Sometimes in a burger there will be a little piece of bone. I showed it to Ginnie. “In your Cheerios?” she asked, and searched through her bowl.

I continued to eat, and chomped down on another bit of something hard. I fished it out of my mouth and it was almost identical to the piece I had bit down on before. I showed the second piece to Ginnie. This time she was upset. She had not found anything in her bowl of Cheerios. She had opened a new box. I had drained what was left from a MEGA box. She said, “I’m going to call Cheerios and complain!”

She looked around on the box and found a telephone number. It said, “We welcome your comments.” She called General Mills and explained what happened. She was using her “friendly voice.” I was in the shower, but I could hear her talking. She was not looking for any compensation. She just wanted to report what I had bitten down on. The friendly lady in marketing asked for the lot number of the box, where the Cheerios were purchased, and if Ginnie could send a picture of the pieces of what appear to be hard plastic. Ginnie was glad to accommodate. Aren’t smart phones handy.

We watched the Nightly News to see if there were any recalls or reports of suspicious material found in Cheerios. Maybe Mt. Pleasant, Iowa would make the news. “RECALL OF CHEERIOS ACROSS THE MIDWEST. CHIPPED TEETH REPORTED!” There were no such headlines.

But a week of so later we did receive a coupon in the mail for three boxes of Cheerios–the puny regular size, and not the kind with the heart shaped Cheerios. Just the Little Os. Oh, well. We donated them to the local food pantry. We’ll stay with the MEGA Size, and be careful when we chomp down.

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Have a good story? Call or text Curt Swarm in Mt. Pleasant at 319-217-0526 or email him at curtswarm@yahoo.com. Curt is available for public speaking.