Okay so this is really crazy, but hey–its right outta the vaults of my childhood…

I have this irrational fear every time I open a granola bar, even though I LOVE granola bars and pretty much live on them.  Still, I’m scared of them and overly paranoid–with good reason.  As a kid, say probably 8 or 9 years old, I was playing at the neighbors house across the street.  Mac’s kids.  They had a huge house compared to our little shack and their kids were kind of flowers in the attic version little girls, but I liked to go over there just to check it out.  Their basement was kind of amazing because their dad, Mac, made these great big crazy envirotexed wood pieces with your family photos frozen in them…

…or a Harley Davidson emblem, or whatever was to your liking!

I just liked to rub my hand along the big knotty wood pieces that were now perfectly smoooooooth with thick resin.  I can still see their own cheesy family photo, Mac in a light colored suit with his hair combed over to the side and his scary teeth showing–which never happened in real life.

Anyway, back to the granola bar:  So I was over at their house and their mom was kind of that battered wife kind of mom–NOTHING like mine. (She hit men, not the other way around, or at least she always hit LAST)  So their weird, timid mom gave us each a granola bar and sent us into the basement to eat them.  I think there was a TV down there because only trashy people let the television babysit their kids…(yuppies pay strangers to babysit under the guise of “enriching”–but that’s another blog)

I will NEVER forget opening the silver wrapper and seeing…tiny, moving MAGGOT PIECES!  I didn’t eat another granola bar until I moved far far away from that life…Oddly, this all happened long before ole Mac went psycho and stabbed a guy 7 times and ran him over 7 times intermittently down the street!  Colorful neighborhood.  Good thing he “found jesus” and only served a few years for “manslaughter”…how does one not INTENTIONALLY run someone over and stab them SEVEN times?? I guess Jesus has the answer because rumor had it–he walked the prison carrying a bible and they let him out, several years early.

Ah well–at least I’m still careful when I open granola bars out of my desk and kind of always re-prepare myself to see little white moving pieces…Maybe the moral of the story is that I still eat them.  I’m not a quitter.