Headline: CHAMPION OF BREAKFASTS

Dawn: the birth of the new day.

They say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. They are scientists, theorists. They are only speaking in a nutritional sense. For some, the meaning of breakfast runs much deeper. For me, go deeper yet.

If we can use the analogy of waking up as the birth of my day, then the hours around breakfast might be regarded as the early developmental part of the day, the time when my day opens its soft, innocent eyes to the world around it, its tabula rasa unfettered by life's graffiti. A fragile time, a critical time. Whatever happens now will have a profound effect upon the emerging personality of the day. Will it grow into a well adjusted, confident, socially responsible sort of day? Or will it become a brooding, gun-admiring sociopath sort of day?

It depends on breakfast.

I approach breakfast with a soul purified by the night: naked; vulnerable. A bad breakfast will leave me feeling betrayed by the world, cheated, hardened. It's unlikely I'll contribute anything valuable to this sort of world.

A good breakfast, however, makes me a partner with the universe, eager to help others and return the good that has been bestowed upon me.

As a child, my mother had complete control over breakfast. The weekly menu was the same every day. There was even a chart on the refrigerator, in the unlikely event I would forget the order. Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday: cold cereal. Wednesday: something involving eggs. Monday and Friday: hot cereal.

I hated hot cereal then; I hate it now. It is sawdust to me. No amount of sugar or raisins or butter could affect my opinion. I grew to hate Mondays and Fridays, and some of that still remains. Imagine, Fridays ruined for all time. On Sunday and Thursday night, I would go to bed with no hope for the following day. I was an evil child two-sevenths of the time.

Ultimately, of course, I grew up and seized control over my own breakfasts. I became a master of the potato. My coffee was so good the cat licked up spills, my waffles were deeply satisfying yet never too filling. I was an adult, and I was healing.

But clouds have again gathered. I travel extensively in my work. I am at the mercy of my surroundings for breakfast. Some days, it's crispy, flavorful homefries and melt-in-your-mouth omelets. Other days it's lukewarm, grainy hashbrowns, chewy, microwaved muffins, and coffee drained from the crankcase of an abandoned Gremlin. There is no way to predict it, I just wait for the plate, take one look, and I know whether it's a day for a jaunty walk in the park or a day for kicking listlessly at pigeons.

At any other meal, I consider myself a willing culinary adventurer, ready to try any sort of weird local specialty, be it basted in root beer or spiced with the adrenaline glands of exotic desert spiders.

But not at breakfast. I need breakfast to reset myself, like some people need a cigarette or a dip in the sea.

When traveling to foreign countries, it is important to have an open mind about one's definition of breakfast. It's considered impolite to laugh at their rendition of "pancake" or openly weep at the sight of jellied fish and cold rice. Dealing maturely with these situations, particularly when you're dining with locals, takes fortitude and cool, elegant manners that extend past merely suppressing the gag reflex. Sadly, the best I can do is stifle the urge to press charges.

Hot cereal never sounded so good.