When I lived in a rural area in New England, we were very close to a local college whose mascot was a dog, and whose campus had its own dairy bar/ice cream parlor. They decided to capitalize on the college mascot by selling those square little plastic dog bowls with their logo on the side and saying that you could buy one for about 2 dollars, then bring it back every Wednesday to fill it up and get All You Can Eat ice cream at the campus ice cream parlor.

This was a big hit, and every family around soon had a collection of square plastic dog bowls in their cupboard for ice cream Wednesdays. But also, they ended up getting used for other things too, since they were considered “people” dishes, not “dog” dishes.

So imagine if you will, one specific decade wherein an entire rural town of farmers and blue-collar suburban workers started breakfast every morning by eating cereal out of dog bowls. Think about how weird that is. Because I didn’t think about how weird it was until just now.