By Maler Suresh
We can definitely say that 2020 has been a rough year so far. I won’t go in depth. We all know how it’s been. But now, the students of Williamsville East have a new enemy to contend with. Cereal. A petition has been started (126 have signed at the time of publication), and action taken, but this nearly insurmountable enemy will not go down without a fight. You too may be wondering what the world has come to. To take hard working students and force them to represent a breakfast food that has to be eaten in under five minutes before it gets soggy in the bowl. Well, I’m here to tell you that maybe it isn’t as bad as you think.
I know that I can’t just jump right into the argument here. You need time. Well, that’s alright. We’ll take baby steps. Forget all the times that cereal has let you down. I know that Krave lied to you about how much chocolate was inside those little squares, and Fruit Loops deceived you for so long before you found out that they’re actually all the same flavor. But for all the bad aftertastes and the upset stomachs, don’t you always come running back to cereal as a midnight snack, or an easy meal? Face it, cereal is a staple in the diet of every person in America, child and adult alike. We have the most dependable flavors like Honey Bunches of Oats, or we can get crazy for Cocoa Puffs. The sky’s the limit. So is it really so bad to be representatives of such a versatile snack? I say no, and I go even farther to say that the snacks represent the best things about our respective classes.
Take the freshmen, for example, ready to take on their first year of high school even though times are tough. They are represented by a resilient leprechaun who, day in and day out, chases his dreams over a rainbow. And even though this year might be as “magically delicious” as a bowl of Lucky Charms with the marshmallows picked out, if you’re patient, you can put those extra marshmallows in the next bowl to make it twice as good. Or the sophomores who, even though they’ve been handed a year as disappointing as a cornflake, might be able to coat it in sugar and make it something grrrrrreat.
The juniors were told that this new school year would bring a return to normalcy and consistency. Even though our school year, and our Froot Loops, may be built on a big lie, our colors remain bright, and we will forge ahead to our Senior year.
And lastly, we make our way to the Seniors. Much like Cap’n Crunch, their last year of high school doesn’t look exactly right. But if anything can be learned from the 25 different flavors of Cap’n Crunch (which include some more questionable inventions like Volcano Crunch, which came with a literal bag of pop rocks to put in your milk,) the class of 2020 will continue to innovate and come up with new ideas to try and make their senior year better.
So maybe you still feel the need to sign a petition over cereal. But I really don’t think it’s that bad. So what if this theme is marginally disappointing? Isn’t that on brand for 2020? At least we can have a laugh even though nothing about the world is funny right now. And though I hope none of you actually eat those cereals for breakfast (except for Lucky Charms,) every time you walk down the cereal aisle in Wegmans, or eat an amazing bowl of sugary wheat in milk, you can fondly remember the absolute ridiculousness that is high school.
