The Philosophy of Breakfast
By Andrew Neuendorf

The family of philosophers had problems eating breakfast together.

"Pass the salt," said the father to the mother.

"Was that a question, a command, or a request?" asked the mother.

"Surely you're not talking to me," replied the father, "since I am but a loose bundle of memories and sense perceptions. In fact, the 'I' that you addressed no longer exists. He is constantly fluctuating toward the future, no more a solid form than a handful of salt is."

"But your base desire for salt," interjected the daughter, between fist-sized bites of scrambled eggs, "is proof that a self-centered organism, devoted to its own preservation, occupies your chair."

"Don't get me started on chairs," said the son, who was holding his bacon to the light.

"Do you suppose this bacon still contains a portion of the pig's essence, or, dare we say, soul?"

"Are you going to eat that?" the father asked his son.

"Is that an ethical challenge?" the mother asked.

"No," replied the father, "I am dying of hunger. I haven't eaten in days, because there is no one here to pass the salt, and no one here to steal that piece of bacon from where it floats above the fork, which is held in the air by a collection of randomly moving particles, which we will call, for lack of a better term, my son, who exists only as a composite of my biological impulse toward distinguishing objects from chaos."

"Coffee always causes fuzzy logic," said the mother, handing her husband the salt.

"Salt?" said the father. "What am I to do with this?"

"Toss it across your eggs," said the daughter, "like seeds sewn on a field of infinite potential."

"No such field exists," said the father, pushing away the salt shaker, "and besides, I don't believe in eggs."

——

Andrew Neuendorf collects generic cereal boxes. His favorites are "Crispy Hexagons" (a version of Crispex) and "Frosting-Coated Wheat Capsules" (Frosted Mini-Wheats). Recently, his writing has appeared on McSweeney's Internet Tendency and News Groper. His prose poems are forthcoming in Quarter After Eight and In Posse Review. In the past, his work has appeared in Northwest Review, Sentence, Measure, Double Room, Effing Magazine, and Kadar Koli.

You can find him waxing and musing on his blog, Ape and Coffee, http://apeandcoffee.blogspot.com. He teaches freshman composition and world literature from an undisclosed location.

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