Miiiight as well face it you're addicted to nuts...

My love for peanuts goes waaaaayyy back. As a young boy growing up in the Midwest, peanut butter sandwiches were a staple of my diet because a) they tasted good and b) they were easy for a 6 year old to make, involving no more than a butter knife and the ability to open a jar. My mom didn’t really mind, since peanut butter sandwiches were better for me than the Snicker Bar diet I would have otherwise chosen for myself – not to mention cheaper. Once, I set out on a four-hour expedition to the roof of our house. We have a picture of little me equipped with two packpacks* climbing up the ladder onto the roof much like a young Edmund Hillary scaling Everest. One backpack was full of reading material, toys, and other vital equipment while the other held rations in the form of water and six peanut butter sandwiches**. And when I say peanut butter sandwich, I mean just that – none of that silly jelly getting between me and my George Washington Carver-engineered peanuty goodness. Eventually, my palate grew to accept other foods I could make myself such as breakfast cereal, trail mix, and chee-tos***, but peanuts were, are, and will ever be one of my favorite foods.

But last night at my second Cubs game in two days**** I thought I’d be smart and buy a bag of peanuts from one of the vendors outside the stadium, since they are usually cheaper than buying bags inside. What I hadn’t figured though was how ridiculously huge the bag I purchased was. Once I opened the bag, the GF and I sat there contentedly munching on peanuts for the first three innings before we realized that our ankles were nearly covered in shells and we had still only made it through maybe a quarter of the bag. Mercifully, at that point, the usher came over and told us that we were sitting in the wrong seats, pointing us over to a completely empty and shell-less row of seats in the next section over. We moved there and left the folks who really had our seats to figure out what to do with our shells. It was a little wet from rain earlier in the day, so I like to think my shells saved their lives by providing valuable traction on what would otherwise have been a deathly slippery surface.

Four or five innings in, we had been joined by our friend B who also helped out a little, but we still had way too many peanuts left. By this time I decided to go get some real food, (hot dog for me, pretzel for the GF – who had stopped eating any more peanuts an inning or two prior) in hopes of providing some variety for my stomach so it could rally. But it didn’t. I left a good 1/4th of the bag sitting there on the concrete underneath my seat, went back to bed and proceeded to have really bizarre dreams for the remainder of the evening. This makes me wonder whether peanuts have hallucinogenic properties when consumed en masse.

I still like peanuts, but I’ll never buy the outside bag again. Unless I’m trying to feed an army trying to invade Russia in winter. And I think it’ll be a while before I am interested in eating peanuts again. Hopefully that will pass before the 13th, the day I’ve got tickets for next.

* One in front, the other in back.
** I wasn’t sure how long I would stay up there, but I was thinking at least a couple days. There’s not much to do once on a roof however, and I severely underestimated my ability to tear through the latest Encyclopedia Brown book from the library in only a half-hour. Plus I hadn’t quite figured out what to do about a toilet and thought my dad would get mad if I used the gutter. Hence, the expedition had to turn back after only 4 hours.
*** All of which remain staples of my diet except chee-tos, which are now only a “sometimes food” given how I completely overdosed on them playing Dungeons & Dragons in high school.
**** My record stands at 1-1 now thanks to a lackluster victory last night.