I've been eating a lot of Corn Flakes lately. One of the good things about being poor is when the parents buy you groceries. Not only because there's suddenly food in the cupboard and it was free, but also because the parents usually buy things that I normally don't. I love cereal, but don't buy it often. It's expensive, and then you have to buy milk on top of that.

I did eat a lot of Corn Flakes when I was a child. I always begged for Frosted Flakes. "No, Crystal. We'll just get Corn Flakes and put sugar on it. It's cheaper." But it wasn't the same. I wanted the cereal with the Tiger on the box, not the Rooster one that my grandparents ate. But I didn't argue. It wasn't fun to piss dad off. At home, the Corn Flakes doused in sugar were pretty yummy; I used a lot of sugar. But Frosted Flakes were frosted, not just sugared, and little me wanted the other chemicals, too. Lately, I've been adding fruit to the flakes. It's really good with bananas. I thought it was gross when my grandparents would suggest adding fruit. I imagine this product was gross.

Seeing the Rooster every day in my kitchen reminds me of the first time I met Mark Regimbal. There was a party at Cam's place in Liverpool. KC, Brian, and I ate some mushrooms. The only mushrooms I'll eat are poisonous. There were a lot of people at Cam's that I didn't know, and the ones I did know, I had just recently met. Some of them were ravers, others were Liverpool jocks grown up and getting wasted. The rest of the folks were the weird Liverpool artist crew. Stephen "sssssuuuuuuccks" Nickerson had one of those laser pointers. Lingley walked around being a walking rave, jerking the laser pointer around himself. It was funny to see, but hard to explain. Stogie and Mark R took some shroomies later than us, and the 5 of us left Cam's to spend some time at the Fort.

The craziness kicked in at the Fort and it was a little hard for me to handle. These guys were going crazy from the drugs at the time where I was coming down. Brian, Ryan, and Mark had just finished living together. It can be very trying to live with people, especially good friends. So they had some issues to discuss and work out so they could be friends again. With the comfortability of their relationships and the energy that comes from hallucinogenics, their discussions turned into yelling matches at times. I plugged my ears and rocked back and forth on the park bench. "Stop fighting. I can't take it. Why are you guys yelling at each other? MOMMY!! DADDY!!! STOP YELLING AT EACH OTHER." Ok, I wasn't serious about all of it, but I wanted to be friends with theses guys and I couldn't understand why they were yelling if they loved each other.

To break the tension, change the subject, and get back to having fun, Mark became the Corn Flakes Rooster. He just ran around the park. He ran in circles. He ran around the lighthouse and jumped up on benches and picnic tables. "I'm the Corn Flakes Rooster. Cock-a-doodle-doo." Over and over and over again.

As we walked from the Fort back to Brian's (we weren't going back to the parents place this fucked; we had planned a slumber party at Brian's) Mark apologized and explained it all to me. He did drugs like that only about once a year, to clear his head. They had to work out those issues. He's sorry. They didn't mean to bother me with the yelling. I told him it's okay. I enjoyed him being the rooster.

Cock-a-doodle-doo.