Growing up, my mom always insisted that we ate a complete breakfast. Since our health, grade-earning potential, and long-term happiness was at stake, we had to gulp down a bowl of cereal and juice if the bus was almost to our stop, or something more filling like porridge or pancakes if if we had more than three minutes. We didn't complain--well, other than throw tantrums in the cereal aisle when she wouldn't buy us Cap'n Crunch or some other technicolor cereal that had more toys in the package than nutrients, and she NEVER did! The line of reasoning that mom had for a complete breakfast, however, had one HUGE drawback--the annual standardized tests. Since every parent knows that these tests determine the college, career, and paycheck their children will have for time and all eternity--it was absolutely paramount that our breakfast on the day of our standardized test be a breakfast more suited to an Australian rugby team that had just played a double match after competing in an Iron Man competition. I remember one year having a table piled high with pancakes, eggs, biscuits, bacon, has browns, several kinds of juices, milk, and STEAK! Ugg, thinking back, I don't remember how much we were able to eat--and I wonder how I was even able to concentrate, let alone do well, on my test with a stomach full of stick-to-your-ribs food. Well, I got into BYU, so depending on your outlook, you can make the call of whether or not mom's breakfast=success theory worked.

Nowadays, Margaret and I have to literally DRAG ourselves out of bed. Compared to our college-aged selves, when we could stay up to 3 am (you know, to read the scriptures), and still make it to 8 am classes, we have fallen indeed. Now we start to feel lethargic at 9:30 and still hit the snooze button three times, stalling our wake-up past 7! What gets me up in the morning now isn't mom's hearty country breakfast, but bagels. And not just any bagel--there is a bagel shop four blocks from our house that the mere thought of in the morning has the power to drag me out of bed and force me to stumble down to get a chocolate chip bagel with peanut butter--they're like crack cocaine to me. Ah, food of the gods! (I say this because they're the perfect thing to be consumed in the morning with Diet Coke, and since all-you-can drink Diet Coke is the official drink of the gods it makes sense that chocolate chip bagels with peanut butter is the official food of them--trust me, it makes sense when you've got a load of carbs and caffeine in you.) Margaret's standard is a pumpkin bagel with cream cheese, which is pretty good--I'd give it a "food of the people in the terrestrial kingdom" rating: good, but there's that little something that keeps it from perfection--I mean, I'll GUARENTEE that you'll never see a pumpkin bagel used for sacrament bread. Anyway, we probably eat our breakfast there 4 or 5 times a week! You know it's bad when they start toasting my bagel when they see me walk by the front door to get a newspaper before I come in. You know, it probably wouldn't be worth the cost and effort if it weren't for the bottomless pop, though. We get so many refills (the sad reality of needing caffeine in the morning but not being able to get it from coffee), that the price evens out. If I'm going to pay $1.39 for a Diet Coke, I'm for darned sure going to be drinking at least 48 oz--and 64 on the weekends when I can linger over the paper as long as I want and not have to sneak into work late. The way I figure it, the more I can drink, the lower the price per ounce is--it's all economics. Hmm, come to think of it--I wonder if the reason I'm compelled to go there every morning is somehow related to a caffeine addiction... Nah! Diet Coke would never have anything but my best interests at heart--isn't that right, my precious? Precious? Oops! Umm, could I get a refill?