Thanks to the influence of one of my imaginary internet friends (insert pretend clever link to Suki-a-go-go's diary here) I have recently started drinking soy milk again. Mostly chocolate, although I did sample some vanilla too in an effort to avoid turning into that bespectacled kid from the old Hershey's syrup commercial who spent all his days mixing and drinking chocolate milk. Vanilla soy milk, however, = a big mistake, because it tastes like a clotted McDonald's shake.

Plain soy milk is the next frontier, but plain soy milk hearkens back to the time my family got healthy. Plain soy milk = Soy Moo, which came not only in large multi-person serving cartons, but also in little individual-sized servings, straws neatly attached on the back: the orthopedic shoe of juice boxes.

We became healthy in our eating habits not from general concern for our well-being, but because my father had suddenly developed a raft of violent food allergies. This will happen if you eat the same things (wheat, milk, peanut butter) each and every day. Listen up, America. Eat wisely, or you too could end up in a doctor's office, a tiny-squared grid drawn on your back, each section injected with a type of food and watched closely for an adverse reaction.

As evidence that food allergies can negatively effect your mood, the doctor cited a story about a young boy who, while waiting to undergo his gridding, built an elaborate LEGO boat in the lobby. Minutes later, after being injected with that manna of the devil, corn, the boy ran amok and smashed the LEGO boat to bits. When the effects of the corn wore off, the boy supposedly remembered nothing about destroying his ship and was surprised to find it demolished. Jimmy crack corn indeed.

The doctor said he had this all on videotape, but he never showed it to us. To be on the safe side, you should all remember never to let the grain and the plastic toy segments of your daily intake pyramid touch.

So we went on a rotation diet, wherein my mother bought out Whole Foods' entire inventory, wrote each food's name on notecards, stuck the cards in a rolodex, and randomly picked groups of foods to be eaten together every four days. In theory, each day would have a set of complementary foods, so that one day you'd have a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich on wheat bread, and the next day a sesame seed butter and peach jelly sandwich on rye. In actuality, it took weeks to work all the scheduling bugs out, and we kept ending up having dinners where the only foods we could eat were apples, turkey, and oats (which make a tasty meatloaf brick when mixed energetically together and baked).

There was also a series of cooking experiments where my mother tried to broaden her repertoire of vegetables. Mashed turnips made an entrance one hideous night, but were quickly booed off the table, most vehemently and traitorously by my mother. Undaunted, she then tried her hand at mashed rutabegas. Milk being a verboten item that particular night, she decided to substitute orange juice on the basis of it being orange (like the rutabegas) and liquid (like the milk). This was also less than a resounding success.

Soy Moo, meanwhile, haunted our breakfasts, day after day slowly turning pale lavender as we left it, untouched, to melt our organic blue corn flakes into mounds of soggy goo.

I think the Soy Moo box even had a cow on the side, taunting you with the irony of the lack of cow-ness inside.

As bad as Soy Moo was, I have decided that I will drink the plain soy milk one of these days. But no blue corn flake is coming within ten feet of my house. Those things were just wrong.