5:47 a.m. - Monday, Jun. 02, 2003
Don't You Just Hate It?

Don�t you just hate it when you bring a five pound bag of Planter�s salted peanuts in the shell home, thinking they�re bound to be better than chips or any other salty snack because, sure they�re fattening, but you�ll have to work so hard to get the little buggers out of the shell that you won�t be able to get nearly as many calories out of an evening�s feed�

And so you�re standing there, in front of the kitchen sink, naturally, and you�re just cracking those shells between your thumb and fingers and eating the salty nuggets as fast as you can and dropping the empty shells into the disposal side of the sink�..

And about half a pound into the bag, you start getting into the zone of peanut cracking; Man, you just turn into this peanut eating machine. You�re cracking shells with both hands and feeding the contents into your maw nonstop and it doesn�t even matter if they're shriveled and rotten or if they�re fat, light brown and beautiful because it all just sort of evens out as you chew it all, the good, the bad and the ugly and swallow as necessary�

And then, somewhere around the bottom of the first pound you even go into a kind of automatic pilot. Your mind goes to that special place, where a warm breeze blows ripples in the cool water of a crystal clear pool in a gurgling brook under the bluest sky, and you can barely hear the faraway sounds; Crack, crunch, crunch, Crack, crunch crunch, as those peanuts seem to flow magically, inexorably out of the bag and into your mouth�

Until somewhere around the middle of the third pound when you just happen to notice right at the last moment, the absolute queen bee of the peanut bag; A single kernel, unbroken, perfect in form and the color of aged clover honey, and you notice it just at the instant it falls out of it�s perfect shell, bounces off the palm of your hand and falls into the debris of all those imperfect peanuts that came before�

And so your mind comes reeling back to reality. You search the shells carefully, without disturbing them, hoping to see that perfect nut and retrieve it. Silently, holding your breath, you focus on the empty shells and papery skins until, Aha! There� you can see just the flank of it, almost buried beneath the dross. And so you reach for it but something goes wrong. A shell is dislodged and the peanut sinks out of sight. You try to dig for it. Carefully at first, but soon with the abandon that comes only from pure panic. It�s no good. The nut is lost. Quite possibly right down the throat of the disposal.

You try to forget about it and go back to eating all the others. I mean, after all, there is (or was) a five pound bag of them. Why waste any energy on one single nut when there are hundreds more?

But no, it�s not the same. Now every nut is substandard. No nut can possibly live up to the lost but magnificent taste of the uneaten queen. From here on, every single one is nothing but another disappointment.

And so then you get angry. Why are you obsessing over one stupid peanut? You don�t know, but you do know that you can�t stop until the last possibility of ever finding that nut is gone. You realize you must turn on the disposal.

And even though you really should know better by this late date in your life, you turn on the water, flip the switch, and wash a little more than two gallons of peanut shells down the drain.

Or partly down the drain, because just at the same moment you�re thinking �gee I hope this goes down� it stops going down. A horrible brownish slurry of chopped up shells and coffee grounds.. (Oh man! I forgot about the coffee grounds!)� comes swirling up through the other drain and the disposal lets go a belch of slurry and spray that shoots out of the sink and onto the floor.

And you know it�s a lost cause, but you try and try to force the stuff down the drain. You hold your hand over the second drain while you switch the disposal on and off until the pressure builds up to a point you can no longer hold it, and waa laa� more water on the floor. You poke chopsticks down the drain and wiggle them around, but all you can feel is a hard packed slug of ook.

It�s Sunday. You can�t call the maintenance guys to come take care of this mess, and you wouldn�t call them anyway. No one must know how insanely stupid you have acted. And so you find your bucket, siphon the nasty water out of the sink, and begin taking everything out of the cabinet below.

And as you�re doing that, you think about the last time you were here. That was on a Sunday too, only that time it was fifteen pounds of uncooked rice. You knew better than that too, but you just had to see if you could tease it down. And the time before that, when you felt strangely compelled to try to shove all the peelings from a ten pound bag of potatoes down, along with a couple of pounds of unpeeled raw shrimp that had accidentally spoiled. You recall that this all took place on a Sunday too, and with the same results each and every time.

And so as you�re dismantling the P-trap of the drain, scooping packed and swelling crapola out of the drainpipes and mopping nasty drain water from the floor, you can�t help but wonder�. �When will I ever learn?�

Don�t you just hate it when that happens?

So do I

Happy Thoughts, Deep Breaths,

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