Why people think that Peanut Butter is the best thing that God put on this earth is beyond me.
See, I've never really understood why peanut butter was so great. It sticks to the roof of your mouth and every now and then that statistic floats around on articles that there can be a rodent hair in every 100 grams of this nasty condiment. Why people still eat this asinine substance is beyond me. For me, Peanut Butter was for getting gum out of my hair (which happened a lot as a child) and for the occasional sandwich. Nothing more.
As a child, peanut butter was one of the very few topics that I was totally neutral about. That is, until one fateful day in January when I was in the second grade.
Of course, this story starts in my music class. We had just settled down on the big rainbow rug. This was the day where we were to learn to draw a treble clef, which was (*supposed*) to be a very exciting day for me, as I loved doodling when I was younger, and learning how to draw that really fancy curly-cue seemed like a lot of fun (I didn't know that I wanted to be a musician at that time). I was seated near the back of the room on the red segment of the rainbow rug, not totally near the corner, but respectably close to it.
Soon, a friend came and sat next to me. She had told the class during our "morning meeting" that she wasn't feeling all that well, but I didn't think of the repercussions of sitting next to her when she felt really sick.
The music teacher hadn't even come into the room yet when I turned to my friend, and she turned to me. Her eyes met mine, and her eyes said it all: she was NOT feeling good. We maintained eye contact for a split second until....
Imagine the shock I was in, dear reader, when I saw a river of recently-eaten breakfast coming at me like that scary gorilla on Temple Run. There was no escaping it. All my hopes of learning to draw that weird squiggly line were swept away whilst in the line of fire of my friend's breakfast. I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. I could just hope that it would miss me, somehow. But it didn't.
Indeed, my friend projectile vomited ON me. The front half of my person was covered, head-to-toe, including my hair and all of my face, with recently eaten Peanut Butter Toast.
We both needed to go to the nurses office. As she was puking in the toilet, Mrs. Weber, the sweet nurse at my school, handed me a wipe to clean the sick off me (I'm sorry, I know there's no way to glamorize this).
Back at the homestead, my poor mother had just woken up from a nap she took after dropping me off at school and was getting ready to enjoy her day off, complete with watching some daytime TV. She was blissfully unaware of the fateful phone call that the nurse would give her.
"Uhm... Mrs. Bennati?" Mrs. Weber said with apprehension and slight confusion in her voice. "Can you come and pick up Lauren? She didn't get sick... Someone got sick ON her."
Almost immediately, my mom finished getting ready and went to my elementary school. When she arrived, the look on her face when she first saw me had all her feelings right there in the open: shock, pity, and disgust. While she was thankful that I had on some clean clothes, she still had to get me home, wash me up, and send me back to school. As the nurse explained to my mother what had happened, I sat there, on the sterile nurse's office bed, motionless and emotionless, covered in peanut butter toast.
I remember the drive home. My dear mother tried her best to comfort me, telling me that everything was okay. I stood there, motionless. It was only when she helped me into the shower and turned the water on that the shock was gone. As the sick was being washed away from my hair, I wept most bitterly. Fortunately my mom was able to clean me off and I went back to school. Thankfully, after that whole ordeal, I didn't become ill myself, but I can't bring myself to eat peanut butter anymore.
Nobody knows how sad and humiliated I get when people offer me PB and J sandwiches, Reese's cups, and Butterfingers, and I have to say "no". I feel like I've missed out on a true-blue American childhood.
So instead of laughing at me for not liking Peanut Butter, remember this story. I do have my reasons.
(PS: If you're wondering if I ever learned how to draw a treble clef, you will be relieved that I was able to learn how to draw one my first year of college. Yes, I should have learned how to sooner, but at least I wasn't left in the dark forever!)
