When I was in fifth grade, Norm was to see that I ate a decent breakfast before setting off to school, since Mom had once again decided to renew her teaching certificate and was employed as a kindergarten teacher. At the time I fairly detested the appearance and taste of cereal, yet managed to choke down a moderate amount before my taste buds rebelled, after which no promptings, no bribery, would make me swallow another spoonful. Norm, feeling it was his duty to inflict some sort of punitive action upon my finicky tongue, would then lead me into the bathroom, and make me watch as he poured the remaining oatmeal into the toilet and flushed it away. Although some people might have found this treatment cruel and definitely unusual in nature, I was struck by intense hilarity upon viewing the mottled gray food hitting the water, looking and sounding like an enactment of the flu season. A few years later I retaliated in kind by saying that the cornmeal mush he was then eating looked like an exact replica of what I'd seen about the floor of the cage in which the bears resided at Brookfield Zoo. "You had to say it, didn't you?" he scowled as he looked at the yellow meal still staring him in the face. Although hot cereal had a personality all its own, sporting a slightly different appearance each day, certain mornings, it just didn't have the eye appeal to start the taste buds rolling. Eventually our bantering jokes collided with such frequency that they lost all of their effect and we would continue eating, undaunted by the grotesque conjurings which were sailing about the kitchen. Though by now a standard joke, oatmeal suffered no lack of humor; to us it was inherently funny. We did not tire of the commonplace and routine; where there is love even the most insignificant of things has a spark. Having eaten breakfast, whether hot cereal or an alternative, we would often fall upon the task of washing and drying the morning dishes. Neither of us minded chores. I have often witnessed people who so rebelled against performing a simple task that in the time they wasted voicing their complaints the chore could have been accomplished completely. When one's mind is filled with happy thoughts, work takes on an entirely different perspective, and mindless tasks give one time to think. I am not attempting to say that, with the proper attitude, work is always entertaining and fun, yet protests only serve to multiply the weight of a potentially simple task.