Into every marriage a few raisins may fall.
I like raisin bran. As a regular consumer of it for some years now, it has been impossible to fail to notice the inexorable rise in the percentage of raisins. Every few years, some fool cereal company announces “Now with More Raisins!”, and every other manufacturer follows suit. No company ever dares lower the raisin percentage, and we’re rapidly approaching the point where we’ll all be buying boxes of fruit with some grain sprinkled in. It got particularly bad in 2005, when the raisin percentage increased alarmingly. One day, about six months ago, I poured myself a bowl of cereal and found, to my alarm, that my bowl was almost entirely full of raisins. As is my habit, I disposed of the excess of raisins, finding myself left with perhaps an eighth of a cup of flakes. So I poured more. Repeat. And so on.
When my lovely bride returned home that evening, I could not help lamenting the tyranny of the raisin majority. She shifted uncomfortably.
“What? What did you do?”
“Well. I eat raisin bran, too. But there are always too many raisins.”
“Yes?”
“So, I pick them out. And I put them back in the box.”
“You put them back in the box?”
She stifled a giggle.
“Yes.”
When folks talk about adjusting to married life, I always figured it was some kind of a euphemism for sex or schedules or newfound responsibility. Not so much. They’re talking about raisins, real and metaphorical.
We’ve got a system worked out now: bran flakes and a bag of raisins.
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