literature

the nostalgia of a peanut

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Literature Text

Everyday I ride the bus home from work. No, not one of those big yellow busses and certainly not one of the short yellow busses either. Just one of your everyday, normal Metro transportation busses. Now this bus has, as most do, advertisements posted on the walls, where on charter busses one would have storage spaces. Well, today when I got on the bus, walked to my usual spot and sat down, I noticed a rather large amount of white off to my right. This disturbed me. I then noticed that it was not just a lot of white, the entire advertisement row was white.

Apparently, someone came up with the insane idea of advertising peanuts. No, not JIF or Skippy. Not even a relatively unknown peanut butter brand. No, the company running the ads was apparently titled something to the effect of The Society for the Promotion of Peanuts. They had come up with clever phrases like “Energy for climbing. Mountain or Corporate,” and “Pot roast is comfort food. Let’s see you fit that in your pocket.” But what really caught my attention was the phrase “Trips to nostalgia leaving daily.” Beneath this little saying was a simple picture of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a bite taken out of it.

This got me thinking. These people are advertising that peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are nostalgic. Well, I wonder if it’s the peanut butter or the jelly that brings about that nostalgia. I became so wrought over it I decided to perform an experiment.

Now, let me tell you that the original idea of the experiment wouldn’t have worked. I thought, “Maybe I should try each of the ingredients separately.” Then I realized that a finger covered in peanut butter is unlikely to be able to pick up jelly, so I would at least have to make sandwiches for all of the experiments.

As any of you who have taken a college science course knows (high school teaches this too, but if you’ve taken a college course, I’m sure you’ll have heard of it), a good experiment has to have a control. In this case, I used bread. No peanut butter, no jelly, just plain old white bread. I would have tried distinguishing between crust and no crust, but I realized that I really don’t have a stomach large enough to cover eight sandwiches. Anyways, the bread sandwich did nothing to make me feel nostalgic. So evidently, the mystic nostalgia power had to be found in one of the other ingredients.

I tried a peanut butter sandwich next. This was quite tasty, though it did leave me with stuck-mouth syndrome. I hate stuck-mouth syndrome. Needless to say, the sandwich did little to increase my nostalgic tendencies. Having failed with the peanut butter, I sought to find my past in a good jelly sandwich.

Even worse luck. Much too sweet, with not enough substance. I did not find myself racing along the paths of time thinking, “Wow, what a great time that was!” Notably, this saddened me. I thought I had failed in my experimentation. The power of nostalgia was not to be found in peanut butter or jelly. But then the “or” caught me. Maybe the power was not in either, but in both! Synergy at its finest. Having so deduced, I set out to prove myself right.

The results were less than amazing. I found that there was much nostalgia to be had with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but as I was filling myself I remembered that I had never really liked peanut butter and jelly anyways. I had always been a peanut butter and honey fan. As such, the moral of the story is: Sticks and stones may break my bones, but hollow points explode on impact.

Note: No peanuts were harmed in the making of this rant.
I wrote this last year after a strange ride home from work.
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playadelcarmen's avatar
Reminds me of something Thurber would think to write about.