In Protest Against Reality Checks

Remember Handi-Snacks Cheez'n'Crackers? Yeah, I'm talking about those packages of artificial cheese, crackers, and the little red plastic rectangle that served as a spreader. Ubiquitous component of the elementary lunch or mid-morning snack scene; crucial currency in classroom economics, where a single cracker (or one of those "breadsticks," even) with cheese might be worth a few Cheetoes or Doritoes; honey and ambrosia of the first-grader.

While my present health-conscious sensibilities cringe at the unsophisticated palate of my former self, Handi-Snacks do hold their nostalgic place in my school memories. However, I'm not here to praise them. You see, I blame Nabisco (or whatever the controlling conglomerate was at the time) for bursting my imaginary and imaginative bubble. For beginning the process of crashing into the real world all too soon. For my first reality check. For some people, this moment comes when they first begin to doubt or are suddenly informed that Santa Claus doesn't exist. With me, it was Handi-Snacks.

This is the story. I was 5 or thereabouts, maybe a bit younger, when I first became aware of the snack packages through television (behold the power of advertising). The commercial featured various children enthusiastically eating the cheese-and-cracker concoctions and subsequently jumping or running or waddling about. They had different footgear on, you see, be they scuba flippers or running shoes or snowshoes, and in walking off they left a set of snazzy purple/blue/turquoise-colored footprints in their wake. I thought it was the coolest thing.

I eventually badgered my mother into buying some of the snacks, carefully spread the "cheese" on a cracker, took a bite, walked a few steps, and twisted around to look for my snazzy-colored footprints. As you may expect, nothing. Biggest disappoinment of my five-year-old life.

Though it didn't bring all my castles in the air crashing to earth (I've still managed to keep a few aloft), that little episode raised the first sneaking suspicion that what I read in books and saw in movies or heard in stories might not be real, and for a child happy in her imaginary world, it was somewhat traumatic. After all, I remember it to this day. Has to count for something.

So Handi-Snacks, I blame you. And your supermegacorporate conglomerate parent. I dust my hands free of your mass-produced, preservative-laden crackers and your misleading marketing campaigns.

Now, where are my water crackers and Brie? I have tea with the Mad Hatter.