The Quaker Oats guy has long been a part of my life. You know who I mean: the smiling smooth-faced man with two huge plumes of white hair framing his face under a broad-brimmed black hat. As a child, I would see him beaming down at me from his place on the canister of rolled oats as I ate my breakfast. With his black hat and locks of luxuriant hair, he looked like a chassidic Jew with a hat and bushy payos who had somehow lost his beard.
Fast forward three decades.
The other day, A insisted that she wanted “boy cereal.” After bringing down all the boxes from the top shelf of the pantry to see which one was “boy cereal,” I discovered that it was none other than the box bearing the beaming face of my old friend, the Quaker Oats man.
R immediately objected. Since the person in the picture has long hair, obviously she’s a girl, and the cereal must be “girl cereal.”
As of this morning the controversy has not yet been settled, as A clamored loudly for “boy cereal,” and R emphatically stated that it was “girl cereal.”
Whatever the cereal is, they both agree that the appropriate blessing to be said before eating it is mezonot—and that is what counts. Amen!
