Today, as my girlfriend and I were getting ready for working at home, I poured her some cereal. I put the milk in, and then the cereal, and proceeded to be lambasted.
Who puts milk in before their cereal? What kind of person puts in milk before cereal? A normal person always puts in cereal, and then puts in the milk. She told me about the fact that cereal gets very soggy if it sits too long in the milk.
I seem to have a very minority opinion about the subject. I even asked my students whether they were milk first or cereal first kind of people, and they were always cereal first people, citing that it makes no sense for someone to put in milk before the cereal. Some people asked me whether I put hot water before the coffee when I make coffee, or whether I was a psycho.
It seems, then, that my action and activity cites some sort of social and behavioral abnormality that doesn't make me conform to the mainstream.
In colloquial terms, pouring in milk before the cereal means I'm a weird person.
Frankly put, no one ever taught me the correct form of whether to put milk in first before cereal, or whether to put in cereal first before milk. Making cereal is one of those things that seems so simple it doesn't need to be taught. You have milk, cereal, and a bowl and you just mix them all -- a three-year-old can figure it out.
That being said, some people, like me, don't normally think when a task is that simple. I don't want to overcomplicate cereal etiquette, but now that I think about it, most of the time I have to eat my cereal very fast and with a sense of extreme urgency whenever I have cereal for breakfast. I, like you, don't want my cereal getting soggy, and I've developed adaptive coping mechanisms to stop my cereal from getting soggy before I eat it.
My adaptive mechanisms go to show that even when we lack traditional form or methodology, we adapt to make things work. Just look at the way some NBA players shoot free throws, including Joakim Noah, Rick Barry, and Shawn Marion. Their form might be 'ugly", but they are, for the most part, effective free throw shooters.
How is my cereal and milk form any different? I eat cereal that's not too soggy and I do it much faster than most people, and then I drink the milk. Besides the fact that I pour my milk in before the cereal, I don't see how my form is too outrageous unless you're paying too much attention. And since I eat my cereal fast so it doesn't get soggy, I probably save more time eating my cereal than most people, too.
Let us be more accepting of people who have non-traditional ways of doing things, like myself. I might be a weird person, but I'm a weird person that gets things done effectively.
