Hold the eggs, toast and sausage, please: Eating the same breakfast every day, year after year

I'm still at a stage in life where chaos is the rule and continuity the exception. The kids may be mostly grown, but there are enough variables in my daily existence to keep things interesting.

One thing that never changes, though – and that's almost a literal "never" – is my breakfast. Every day it's the same thing eaten at the same time and generally with the same utensils.

With very few exceptions, you will find me sitting at the kitchen table between the hours of 7:00 and 7:30am eating these exact foods:

• A 1/2 cup of rolled oats cooked (microwaved, really) in water
• A banana
• A cup of black coffee

The oats are eaten out of the same black plastic bowl designed for the purpose. The banana is usually medium ripe and medium-sized. The coffee is without creamer and drunk from one of only three mugs I have in rotation.

I should mention this is all by choice. No one is forcing any of it on me.

Whatever else the day may have in store, it starts with this never-changing breakfast.

There is a certain comfort in it, to be sure. For one thing, I never get sick of the plain oats, the banana or the coffee. Ever. They're as tasty for me now as they were when I fell into this routine however many years ago (I honestly can't tell you when it started).

There's also very little prep time involved. I mix the oats and water and microwave them for exactly 1 minute. The banana is quickly plucked from the fruit stash on our kitchen counter. And the coffee comes out of the Cuisinart machine Terry bought me for Christmas that I just love.

All told, from the moment I start making breakfast to the moment I start eating it is less than 3 minutes.

This comes in especially handy on days I have to go into the office or get myself to some other morning commitment.

Lunch and dinner will vary, but breakfast? It's my most important meal of the day not for its nutritional value, but for its reliability.

You will understand, then, how in some ways I have been a 76-year-old man for most of my life.