CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
A Basic Day
I loved autumn, a season both riotous and melancholy, and it was best shared with those I loved. Thus I spent a great amount of time with Norm. We shared a mutuality which spanned the insignificant to the more complex modes of thought in such a way that neither of us felt compelled, nor hindered, to speak. As comfortable in each other's company as we were alone, our relationship did not possess the usual tensions and expectations so prevalent in most friendships. That we enjoyed each other was enough.
Through the week, Norm worked second shift as a custodian at a local junior high school. Since he didn't depart for work until 3:00 p.m., his daily routine at home usually consisted of leisurely activities, lest he become too tired to properly do his work.
We shared the upstairs, which was divided into two separate rooms with an accordian door, providing privacy that was sufficient, yet far from sound proof. Generally we would wake around the hour of 9:00 a.m. Either the static notes of his clock radio or a rustling which attested to his hastily making the bed would usher through the door, and harken the beginning of another day, or I would rise first and find Norm staring at the ceiling among an entangled mass of sheets.
The person who made it downstairs first was the one who, if Mom had made some for herself and Dad, divided the morning "gruel." Since the family had recently acquired a microwave oven, the machine allowed a quick and thorough heating of the cereal if one simply transferred the contents of the pan into stoneware bowls.
Because several hours had passed between Mom's preparation of the cereal and our reheating of the same, it usually molded itself into a solid bulk shaped exactly to the pan's dimensions. This made dividing easier but deftness was needed to assure that each half found its way into the bowl. On one particular occasion Norm, spatula poised in hand, was directing each slimy mass into its bowl when one half escaped his control and proceeded to flop onto the counter, splat on the floor and go skidding across the waxed tile. I found this affair to be thoroughly amusing as it was in the same scenario which I had starred only a week before. Perhaps it would not have been so humorous if the cereal did not have such a nasty appearance, which in itself would seem to ward off any potential consumer. Moreover, hot cereal had quite a lengthy history between Norm and me.
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.