Animal Crackers for Breakfast

When I was a little girl, I absolutely loved when my mother would buy me a box of animal crackers and I have yet to outgrow my fascination and obsession with the colorful little boxes and the biscuits inside. Although Stauffer Biscuit Company originated the animal cracker, the most well-known animal crackers, and the ones I ate growing up were Barnum's, made courtesy of Nabisco (originally, the National Biscuit Company). The circus animals used to be in cages until Nabisco liberated them in response to complaints by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Now they roam freely on the box!

I feel like we owe an immense debt of gratitude to the people of Britain for originally inventing biscuits and specifically, animal crackers. The word cracker is totally misleading! It is more a lightly sweet cookie, and so delicious. Goldilocks would agree they are not too sweet and not too bland but have just the right amount of crunch (unless they are stale, in which case they are slightly soft and just as good). The Nabisco box, which was originally made to look like a circus train, is colorful and happy (especially now that the animals are cage free), and call me crazy, but there is something magical about the cream-colored webbed string at the top of the box that allows you to easily carry it. Nabisco originally added the string so the box could be hung as a Christmas ornament, but I always assumed it was for ease of carrying, and I always carried my animal cracker purse as if I were holding a super blinged-out Dolce and Gabbana bag. Like I said, magical.

Adulting comes with its joys and challenges, but it also means I can make the rules. And every once in a while I secretly treat myself to a box of animal crackers ….for breakfast. While not the traditional breakfast food, one box is only 260 calories, has 3.5 grams of fat (but no trans fats!), two grams of protein, a little iron, and 130 mg of calcium (that is 10 percent of your daily allowance!)! We will ignore the 7 grams of sugar; they don’t taste that sweet. And some people may argue with me, but I call that a good-enough nutritional win-win! There is something special about opening that waxed paper bag inside the cardboard animal cracker box. We think we know what is inside, but do we really? There is always a surprise of sorts. It is this innocent experience of surprise I don’t want to ever outgrow. I find opening a box of animal crackers at the start of the day wakes up my imagination.

Some days, I want the animals in my box to be friends and I name each as I pop them into my mouth. Some mornings, I focus on the sounds each of the animals would be making as they greet one another and their audience in the circus tent. Some mornings I wake up and take great pleasure in biting off the heads of each of my animal cookies, because we can’t be daisies and sunshine 24-7. Some days I wonder what it would be like to be naked, wild and completely free like the 37 animal species that have ever been included in the box, and some days I am grateful for the civilized monkey wearing pants, the only animal cracker who has ever worn clothes. Some days we need the familiar: the bears, elephants, lions, and tigers; and some days we need the novelty of Komodo dragons, peregrine falcons, Hawaiian monk seals and Bactrian camels, all endangered species who have shown up in our boxes over the years. Eating animal crackers for breakfast is a mini adventure, a challenge to the imagination, and a gentle reminder that sometimes its ok to embrace your inner child.

I spent the last few years of my life writing a memoir about what it was like to live with and care for my mother who had ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and lessons I learned through that experience. I recently finished writing all 31 chapters, made sure I dotted my I’s and crossed my t’s, closed my laptop, and basked in the joy of accomplishment. And then I spent days wondering “what next?”. I quickly realized I missed writing every day and discovered just how much it had become a part of my life and routine. This fueled my decision to blog, starting with my commentary about animal crackers for breakfast.

I love to write about totally random things that move me, much like where my imagination goes when I open a box of animal shaped just-sweet-enough biscuits. I love to reflect on and write about the intersection of life and my faith, and I love to write about questions for which I don’t have the answers. I enjoy writing about the joys and difficulties in life, and I love to write about finding the humor in it all. So, old and new friends, as we embark on this literary journey together, I challenge you to grab that little box of biscuits with the wild animals the next time you are walking through the cookie aisle in the grocery store. Grab the little string on top of the box, think about what it feels like between your fingers, and celebrate holding your little colorful cardboard purse of opportunity. Because sometimes we need to adult, and sometimes it feels good to embrace our inner child. Thank you for reading and may we all eat more animal crackers for breakfast!