Roaches in the Cereal Box

I had a recent conversation with my friend and somehow the subject of my fascinating childhood came up. I told her about how poor we were and how creative we used to get when it came to finding food to eat on the weekends.

She said the most profound thing; she never suspects that light skinned people go through these types of things.

Hmmm. Let me enlighten those who may have thought I always lived such a "plush" lifestyle.

Reader discretion is advised.

Sometimes we'd steal corn from the corn field down the road and slice the kernels off into a frying pan. Mix it up with butter and fry it until it was burnt and crispy. Sprinkle madd salt on it and you were good to go.

For some reason, my grandma used to always keep a bag of coconut in the cabinet. I had a habit of pinching coconut out of the bag throughout the day and she never noticed some of it was missing when she was ready to use it.

Then there was the sugar toast. We'd toast bread and sprinkle sugar on it. Delicious! And don't forget sugar water and sugar milk....

That reminds me of the times we'd run out of milk and have to eat our cereal with water. You had to use alot of sugar to camoflauge the taste... This works best with cornflakes.

I remember the first time we had to chase roaches out the cereal box. There were so many of them!! But it was all we had to eat before going to school and we just sat at the table with the saddest looks on our faces. That would not be the last time we had to do that...

One morning, my grandmother made a big pan full of eggs. They were so fluffy and yellow. But, a huge roach had crawled into the edge of the pan and died on the side of the eggs. I saw my grandmother non chalantly scoop it out and fed everyone the eggs anyway. She told me to keep quiet so I know she knew that wasn't right...

to be continued...