I won the last bi-monthly humor contest. My wife, who long ago decided I was no Seinfeld, is sure I bribed somebody or possess compromising pictures of the contest judges and sheep. (Not true. They were goats.) Now, sitting at my breakfast table faced with the pressure of defending the title, I search for inspiration and find it inside of me.

Have you ever noticed that a bite of Grape Nuts* never really gets fully chewed? My experience is, at some point, either my jaws get tired or its time to go to work and I am forced to swallow prematurely. The cereal wins.

Why, then do I take up the challenge in the first place? Why not choose an easier cereal? Because Grape Nuts is advertised as being healthy…but is it really. Maybe we have just been programmed by Wilford Brimley, Jerod and The Jolly Green Giant to a point we think that any foodstuff advertised to be healthy, regardless of appearance or content, must be so.

I defaulted to Grape Nuts this morning because the other cereal options were scraping bottom of the bowl from a healthy eating standpoint. I couldn’t bring myself to try my kid’s Peanut Butter Cap’n Crunch. I once tried regular Cap’n Crunch and spent thirty-six hours on a sugar high.

Apparently, however, somebody thought the original wasn’t sticky sweet enough and decided the already dentist-damned conglomeration needed to be slathered with even more enamel eating goo. (I suspect the culprit was my kids’ dentist.)

Option two this morning was Count Chocula. Chocolate, according to my wife, even in cereal form, contains chemicals that increase happiness. (Upon hearing this, I ran out and bought her two boxes.) However, I have an aversion to seeing chunks floating in chocolate milk and have yet to see the promised effect on my spouse, so I passed. I could have gone with oatmeal but I have suspicions about the effect of putting any substance that can be substituted for glue into my digestive system.

My spouse believes I am too critical of the makers of breakfast cereals. She thinks cursing when corn flakes get mushy or raisin bran gives me gas, is misplaced anger. She doesn’t understand why the picture on a Wheaties box triggers an inferiority complex. She thinks I ought to eat a happy breakfast food…something chocolate…like Twinkies.

*The name “Grape Nuts” disturbs me. Setting aside the juvenile humor relating to the anatomy of grapes, there is nothing “grapy” about this cereal.

P.S. I again enclose herewith pictures of very unhappy goats.