Alpha Male

"My Alpha-Bits have a message in them."

I looked up from the newspaper. "What do they say?"

"They say GWAJNKALPZ." Her hair was sleep-tousled, and her eyes were half-shut, and she snorted a little bit when she laughed at her own joke.

And that's when I decided I had to marry Sara Sidle.

I planned it all out. It had to be sweet and romantic, even though I wasn't very good at being either, and it had to be unique. Original. Creative. And to my surprise, the idea came to me fairly easily.

"Did you get two boxes of Alpha-Bits cereal?" Sara was unloading the groceries, looking perplexed.

"Oh... yeah, I did." I'd meant to hide the one box before she saw it.

"Why?"

"Why not?"

In the face of this brilliant retort, she had no comeback.

The O's were really hard to find.

They were there, but for some reason most of them were all smushed into themselves, so they looked more like rectangles than anything else.

I'd dumped half the box into a cooking pan, and was going through the pile on my desk. A magnifying glass helped, but my eyes were swimming, and at one point I was pretty sure I'd found Waldo.

So far, I had:

S A W L M M

It was harder than I'd expected.

"Let's go for a walk," Sara suggested the next day. "We haven't been to the park in ages."

"You go ahead, I'll catch up."

I'd meant to, too. But then the R's were so hard to find, and by the time I had S A R W L L U M R M sitting in a line, I could hear Sara coming back in the front door.

"Okay, I'm ready," I called, jumping to my feet and heading out to meet her.

She laughed gamely, and took another walk.

I was starting to wonder whether alphabet soup would have been a better idea. The stupid O's looked wrong, and this was the sort of project that needed to look right.

I had S A R A W I L L Y U M A R R M E, all laid out in a straight line. So, so close. Just needed another Y and an O.

I found a Y just before Sara got home from work. I greeted her at the door with an exuberant kiss, and Bruno greeted her the same way, and she told me it was the best welcome home she'd ever gotten.

A third box, and two hours spent picking through another pile. A sore back, and still no decent O's.

Really, was it that hard to make an O?

I mean, Cheerios did it all the-

Oh. Right.

It was all ready. Twenty-five minutes spent perfecting the line-up in the bowl, and making sure Bruno didn't bump the table and send the letters careening around the milk.

"Sara?"

"Yeah?" She was in the bedroom, changing out of her sweaty work clothes.

"Can you come here for a second?"

"I'm going to take a bath, give me ten minutes."

My mind raced. In ten minutes, the cereal would be soggy and the shapes would start to bloat. "No, just... real quick, I promise."

She came into the room wearing nothing but a tee shirt, her head cocked to one side. "What's up?"

"I made you breakfast," I said, gesturing grandly to the bowl of cereal. My heart was pounding out of my chest.

"Oh, it's okay, I'm not that hungry," she said, giving me a quick smile.

"No, it's... just eat a little."

"I'll grab some eggs after my bath."

"No, just..." I ran my hand through my hair, frustrated. "Just sit down for a second. Have some cereal."

"Uh, okay." Throwing me an odd look, she sat down at the table. I'd put the box of Alpha-Bits right next to the bowl, so she wouldn't expect anything was up, and- "Geez, Gil, I know I don't have much of an appetite, but I can eat more than a dozen pieces."

And before I could stop her, she picked up the box of cereal, and dumped about a cup of Alpha-Bits on top of my proposal.

Stunned, I watched as she chewed a spoonful of cereal. I finally poured myself a bowl of Cheerios, sitting beside her with a sigh.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"Nothing."

"Gil, what's-"

"Will you marry me?" I asked.

She chewed two more times before swallowing, but it seemed to take hours. "Sure."

We put down our spoons and kissed for a while, while my bowl of cereal said, "Oooooo..."