Like Parents Like Daughter

Whenever I'm at my parents' house I wake up really early.  Usually it's because I'm excited that I'm home and figure that Pops' cow sprayer has broken again and he needs help fixing it. (It conveniently breaks a lot whenever us kids are home, there are rumors floating around that it might be rigged).

So I usually go find a pair of Mom's old jeans and one of her t-shirts and make my way to the kitchen where, inevitably, I find my parents sitting at the kitchen table having their devotions and eating their breakfast.

"Want to join us?"  Pops will ask.  I'll look at his breakfast, a bowl of plain yogurt mixed with strawberries All Bran Buds and maybe, if I'm really unlucky, there will be some bananas cut up on the top.

"Sure! But I am not eating that,"  I'll say.

"Come on, it's good."  Mom will try to convince me, and then take a nice big bite.

"No way; it's positively disgusting.  I tried it once,"  I maintain.

I hate everything about bananas (but mostly the smell) so I usually sit as far away as possible from whichever of them has bananas in their yogurt mixture.  And I'm sunk if they both have bananas.

I'll get myself a granola bar or munch on dry cereal while Pops reads out of Our Daily Bread and we pray together.  (Usually the bananas are all consumed by this point.) 

Then I go tag along with Pops and "help" him fix things.  If I'm very lucky (and usually I am) we have to stop for Pepsi and sustenance sometime in the course of me helping do whatever it needs to get done.

The problem with this whole otherwise idyllic scenario is the yogurt thing my parents eat for breakfast.  (It's even worse when mom dumps in a quarter cup of wheat germ...)  For about 10 years now I have been giving them a hard time about their disgusting breakfast of choice.

I'm not sure what happened when I turned 25, but shortly thereafter I began looking in the dairy fridge in the morning thinking "I should have some yogurt."

Two weeks ago, I finally did it.

I poured half a container of plain organic yogurt into a bowl and cut up a whole bunch of strawberries and raspberries. I mixed them in until they were throughly coated and then....then I went to the cupboard and dug out a bran-type cereal and dumped it on top of the yogurt covered fruit.

Realizing what I had done, I stepped back and stared at my bowl.  This can't be happening.

One of my associates came up beside me and looked at my breakfast.  "That looks really...different," he said diplomatically.  "I would never have thought to add the cereal."

I surprised myself when I replied, "Well, it's actually pretty good." And took a nice big bite.

And I have eaten yogurt, fruit and cereal almost every morning since then.  Not only do I look exactly like my mother, but I eat breakfast like her now too!  (And follow around poor Joey picking up the things he's currently using and putting them away just like her.)

I might as well not fight it any more.