Poptarts

A Word from the Suburbs

It turned out that forty packages of vanilla-frosted pop tarts fill a shopping cart, so I felt conspicuous and looked furtively around the store. In a place like Lexington it is not advisable to advertise the fact that your kids could be hitting the streets at 7.15 AM on a breakfast of pop tarts. Fruit Loops and Cap’n Crunch are associated, however loosely, with nutrition, the legendary Hostess Twinkies are never presented as a replacement for wholesome oatmeal and eggs, but even the admen are silent on the subject of pop tarts. Once, I remember, I stupidly let slip to my friend Penny Hart that I bought pop tarts for my children. And then I compounded the error by assuring her that they did not eat them for breakfast (which they tended to skip entirely) but fell upon them like wolves on returning home from school. From the expression on Penny’s face, I could see that news of my nutritional apostasy would soon be all over the school. And now, how was I to explain to a smirking check-out clerk that buying forty packages of pop tarts was not a concession to vice but a last, desperate attempt to wean my children off a dreadful pseudo-food.

For some years now I had been quietly buying a couple of packages a week, always hoping that my son and daughter would finally tire of so much concentrated artificial sweetness, and equally always disappointed. By the fifth year, only one brand (the most expensive) and one variety (the most sickly) were considered acceptable. For a while, I tried substituting other kinds. Returning from the store with vague remarks about Stop and Shop Raspberry being on sale and just as good, I would be greeted by howls of protest and a total boycott of the despised product.

Such maneuvers on my part were met with precise counter measures by the children. Catherine issued me with carefully written shopping lists headed by VANILLA-FROSTED CHOCOLATE POP TARTS. Worse, one or both children tried to accompany me on all trips to the store so as to be absolutely certain that (a) the correct toaster pastries were in fact purchased and (b) that said items were divided scrupulously between the two consumers.

News of the Gill family pop tarts spread, as did addiction to them. Christopher’s large hungry High School friends would scour the place for pop tarts, even violating Catherine’s supposedly brother-proof cache. Of course, when my daughter got home and discovered her pop tarts GONE! she would throw hysterical rages, lob heavy objects at the offenders, and in a torrent of carefully calibrated tears and invective, make me promise to buy her two more packages the very next day to replace the stolen one.

So, when I entered the Stop and Shop one day and saw, for the very first time, the canonic brand and variety ON SALE AT HALF PRICE, I hit upon a plan to rid the house of pop tarts. Let glut succeed where scarcity failed, I thought, as I displayed the forty boxes to my two children, placed them in a cupboard conveniently located next to the toaster, and begged the world to eat as many as they could. Invite friends!

We had several weeks of glorious peace in the household. Not a single pop tart fight! But then I found the latest shopping list from my daughter, headed by FORTY PACKAGES OF VANILLA-FROSTED CHOCOLATE POP TARTS WHENEVER ON SALE. Appetite, it appeared, had risen to meet supply in this particular market.

So now I have given up the fight. I obediently buy three packages, putting two in the drawer and one behind the encyclopedia in case of a raid. And sometimes, when life seems especially stale, flat, and unprofitable, I put the kettle on for tea, and pop a tart in the toaster.

If you can’t beat’em, join’em!

Lexington circa 1984