Crunchy Peanut Butter: Knowing You’re All Growed Up

You ask people the moment they knew they were an adult and they’ll give you varying answer.

A Rite of Passage

When they got their driver’s license… The first time they drank a Bartles and Jaymes… The night they got felt up by the college guy under the bleachers of the football stadium… The day they first voted.

I remember the day I knew I was all growed up… I was a 20-year-old boy… After me and all the residents of Bagley Hall (or Modell 6 as we lovingly referred to it) were told we weren’t allowed to return to that dorm the next school year because of all the physical damage we had inflicted on the building, I decided to move into an apartment with my brother – Tony.

After 18 years of having my mother make the grocery shopping decisions and two years of eating campus dining, I was given the freedom of doing my own grocery shopping… That first day of walking up-and-down the aisles, I was in awe… An unlimited number of options… I was like a kid in a candy store… But the candy store also had meat... And cheese… And then the special moment occurred… I spotted the Peanut Butter Aisle… Sadly that’s not an aisle devoted exclusively to peanut butter, but rather the aisle where the peanut butter resides… It often shares the aisle with jelly and bread and other items… Which is sad… It deserves its own aisle… Like cereal… And soda.

As I glanced at the variety of peanut butters, I heard the voice of my mother talking to me… Like Patrick Swayze talking to Whoopi Goldberg in ‘Ghost’, I heard her say “Don’t get the crunchy peanut butter… You don’t get as much peanut butter in a jar of crunchy as you do in creamy.”

When I was a wee little boy, I always asked my mother to get crunchy peanut butter… She would never relent… We were a creamy peanut butter family… And that was her rationale… She believed you got more peanut butter in a jar of creamy than you do crunchy… Every time I asked her if we could get crunchy peanut butter she would say “You don’t get as much peanut butter in a jar of crunchy as you do in creamy.”


Goober...
 Cutting out a step on the road to greatness

I don’t know where she came up with that… She didn’t get it from her father… Papa didn’t worry about how much peanut butter was in the jar… He would take a jar that was only half peanut butter… And he did… He always had a jar of Goober in his refrigerator… The stuff was awesome… Half peanut butter, half jelly… Even if I just ate, any time I was at Papa’s house, I’d fake hunger… So I could make a Goober sammich… They were amazing.

I don’t know where she got her theory… It makes no sense… Maybe you go through crunchy peanut butter faster because it’s so awesome… Maybe you go through it faster because you spread out two spoonfuls instead of one when you’re making a PB&J sammich because it’s so awesome… Maybe you go through it faster because before putting the cap back on after making a PB&J sammich, you eat a spoonful because it’s so awesome… But you get the same amount of peanut butter in a jar of crunchy as you do in a jar of creamy… I’ve done tests.

So there I was… Standing in the peanut butter aisle… And that’s when I became an adult… I grabbed the crunchy peanut butter and put it in the cart… I took five steps and then turned around and put three more jars in the cart… I was an adult… With my crunchy peanut butter… I was all growed up.

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When did you find out you were an adult?