Column: Chew On This; A year full of chewing on a variety of things
Last week when I decided Lucky Charms had too many marshmallows in it, I finally realized that I am old.
I never thought I’d see the day when sugar cereals lost their appeal, but it seems like the Lucky Charms of today is just a little too marshmallowy delicious.
When I was a kid, a box of my favorite General Mills cereal was sparsely populated with pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, blue diamonds and green clovers.
I liked them so much that I’d eat all the useless oat-based cereal pieces first, leaving a huge assortment of marshmallows to consume together.
Whole spoonfuls of highly-sugared tastiness was so appealing that every time I opened up a new box, I secretly wished it would only contain only the marshmallows.
Since then, many new marshmallows have been added making the current assortment include purple horseshoes, red balloons, blue moons, orange and white shooting stars, yellow and orange pots of gold, multicolored rainbows, two-tone green leprechaun hats, pink hearts and green clovers.
General Mills also increased the size of the marshmallows and made them brighter in color. Theoretically, this should be a dream come true.
But no, as I’ve I come realize, I’m getting old. And packaged with my decreased desire for wads of sugar in the morning is a dose of retrospection.
This school year has been a wild one at “Chew on this.” I’ve covered topics ranging from first experiences in pumpkin carving to coveting the Cadillac of all toilets.
And, as always, every subject was perfectly crucial.
Last October during the World Series, a couple of burning baseball-related questions were answered in this column.
“Why do I dislike baseball?”
“Where do those medical personnel save all that pee used for drug testing?”
Then there was the week I wrote about my death-defying 2-year-old goldfish and how I kept it alive early in its existence on just a taco shell.
Turns out that Goner died just a couple weeks later after the column was printed.
I turned him loose to the great fishbowl in heaven. There was no 21-gun salute that day; merely the rushing and slapping sound of water going around in circles. I hummed “Taps.” It was touching.
The highlight of last semester was actually unexpected. I succeeded in upsetting every Chinese student at USU. Together, they triumphantly rose up in rebellion to my column titled “Tofu should be banned by the FDA.”
This controversial column included the confession that I was a vegan – a special kind – one that eats steak and ice cream. I also mentioned my “love” for tofu.
Apparently suggesting that tofu derived from the ancient Chinese “to,” meaning “mushed” and “fu,” meaning “vomit” really isn’t very funny.
Furthermore, the implication in the column that tofu was really invented by jealous hippie soybean farmers is actually false. I apologize to any Chinese students that may have been offended by misrepresentation.
By the way, I recently discovered the true origin of tofu. It comes from the ancient Chinese “to,” meaning “blended” and “fu,” meaning “puke.” It was harvested and sold by disgruntled hospital orderlies in the last couple of centuries BC.
Tofu is gross. I wrote a letter to my congressman. He agrees.
The FDA will be consulting on the subject in late July.
Things chilled out spring semester this year. Mostly because I was perpetually frozen solid trying to ascend the 700 North hill to campus. The new handrail helped most of the time, just not the day I was convinced to stick my tongue on it.
So, while enduring the late winter snow and cold, I wrote about winter-related topics like the true origin of the Winter Olympics (beer), and why we should all move Logan to a much warmer climate – potentially southern Utah, but preferably the moon.
And to cap off a beautiful semester, I cleaned the sink at Angie’s and banned George W. Bush from my house.
So yes, it’s been a wild school year at “Chew on this.”
Now it’s time for a summer hiatus, a chance to do some inanely spectacular things for me to write about next year. Although, according to my bowl of cereal, maybe I shouldn’t get too crazy. It might onset an acute case of arthritis.
I guess I’ll just stick to plucking out the excess marshmallows.
Garrett Wheeler is a second bachelor’s student in technical theatre design. Send any comments or column ideas to wheel@cc.usu.edu.