Friday was a day like many others. Still a bit of sun, but winter chill was just around the corner. Dave and I went for a walk. A musical fart might have happened. It might have been mine. Dave gave it a thumbs-up and an Eight, because he is a supportive guy. And it hit me: This might be my last innocuous flatulatory emission for days. The World Series was mere hours away. It’s peanut time!
I watch the occasional tennis match and one or two basketball games, but the bulk of my yearly sports consumption happens in fall. It peters in toward the end of the pennant races and climaxes in the World Series, otherwise known as the Annual GI Tract Challenge. I have already purchased my salted peanuts in the shell. I am locked and loaded.
I deny that I have a problem with portion control. One bag equals one portion. I used to get the three-pound bags but my GI tract was younger then. That should have killed me even then but I didn’t know better. My digestive system was like a young woman who still thought she needed to be polite to handsy old lechers; it just took whatever got dished out and made the best of it. I have learned. Now I modify my intake by buying the peanuts in one-pound bags.
Still, it’s a lot to ask of the old intestines, sending that fat-protein-and-fiber bomb sluicing down the old goober tube. But I really like salted peanuts in the shell and eat them only during the World Series, and I figure that as long as the incoming peanut barrage does not strand a gravel bar at that last sharp bend before the rectum, I should be okay.
But just because I’ve survived this internal assault every year so far doesn’t mean I can continue without consequence. Things happen. For instance, mere weeks before my latest birthday, which was one of those consequential ones, I suddenly presented with osteoarthritis in my right index finger. Which is a pretty specific age-related event which I in no way asked for. I try not to complain about it too much because, frankly, a lot of people my age are dead. But guess the hell what? It’s my main peanut-shell crunching finger.
I still have to decide who to root for. It’s not straightforward. The Red Sox are out; so are the Yankees, who I would naturally root against. We’ve gotten it down to a Texas team and an Arizona team. The Arizona Diamondbacks only started playing in 1998 and won a World Series when the franchise was still in diapers. And, they beat the Yankees to do it. The Texas Rangers haven’t ever won a World Series. And they used to be the Washington Senators, which was my team when I was little. So I could make a case for either team. Draw.
Texas has two Republican senators including Ted Cruz whom nobody likes, and Arizona has one Democratic senator and one technicolor whackadoodle spanglebunny who loves attention more than her country. Still, advantage Arizona.
Diamondbacks are reptiles. Rangers are police. Advantage Arizona.
Neither team contains José Altuve, who is old, short, and fabulous. Draw.
The Arizona outfield is herpetologically mown into a snakeskin pattern. The Texas outfield is features a Bonnie and Clyde design with little X’s over their eyes, and a dead-Mexican motif in the warning track. Draw.
So, slight edge Arizona. I have three one-pound bags, and I’m thinking about giving them a soothing ice-cream escort. I’m ready. Go Butter Pecan! I mean Diamondbacks!
Oh hell, I don’t care. After my third bout of peanuts, I’m just rooting for a sweep.
Sometimes when couples easily, cheerfully, comfortably create stinking farts in front of each other, I feel a little envious. What gives them the ease to do so? Am I missing a gateway to greater intimacy? Could there be more laughter around the dinner table?
My spouse and I made a deal early on. We’d not do that to each other. And we haven’t, not in 35 years, discounting the odd accident.
Turns out that deal saved my life. Spouse informed me recently that had I allowed it, I’d be dead by now: his gas is that poisonous.
Go Diamondbacks!
I certainly wasn’t raised that way, so maybe that’s your answer–the first twenty years of suppressed pootage. Takes a toll! I always wanted to do a needlepoint for my cabin: “Welcome to our cabin! No inaudible farting.”
I know nothing about sports. And yet, when Paul used to work at a place that had a football pool going, they let me place bets, as well as him. My system was NOT about how well the team was doing. It was based on the team names: Giants would beat most anybody, because they are huge. Any team with “socks” in their name would lose, because c’mon… how threatening is a sock? Eagles and Ravens? Well, ravens are clever, but if they were going talon-to-talon with an eagle, they would lose, as eagles are more predatory. The wonder is that despite this “system”, I would win the pool more times than anyone else. Eventually, they stopped doing the pool because the guys weren’t winning very much. I was sorry to see it go, as it made me a few bucks pretty consistently.
I had a similar winning streak going one night at a bar where you could actually place bets on horse races. I kept interrupting the table next to us, where they were placing bets, and saying Nope, you want Streaky Pants for the win…and Streaky Pants won. Next game, I did the same thing. Third game, they actually turned to me before betting. Dave and I aren’t gamblers (there has to be ONE vice we don’t have) but when we got up to leave, I was wondering what the tab was, and Dave said it was taken care of AND we had $90 left over. He’d gotten up to place my bets too.
I still remember the horse’s name “Bramble Dawn” that my wife and a friend bet on just because they liked the name.
I eat peanuts and peanut products infrequently. So I tend to forget why I do so. I keep a jar of peanut butter in the fridge to bait mouse traps and every now and then I succumb to the urge to smear some on toast. And then I remember why I avoid it.
The other day the boss offered me roasted peanuts in the shell. I knew there was some reason not to, but it was the end of the day, so why not have a handful?
Poison gas in the car all the way home followed by a mad dash to the bathroom.
Man, they tasted good!
P.S. What’s the deal with boiled peanuts? I’ve never had them, never seen them. Are they soft? Are they served with something?
I do not know. I’m horrified by the thought, but I’ve never had them.
At around age 45 or so I tasted boiled peanuts (which is to say goober peas) for the first time when a southerner brought them to the lunch room at work. To my surprise, I loved them! I haven’t had any since, which may be just as well. Yes, they’re medium soft, and no, they’re eaten plain — “Peas, peas, peas, peas, eatin’ goober peas / Goodness how delicious, eatin’ goober peas!”
Thanks for the earworm!
I once had boiled peanuts because I had moved to the south and that’s what southerners do. They are slimy. When I mentioned that to a friend, she said that they must not have been boiled properly. Boiling is boiling says I.
Nothing is slimier than boiled okra, but maybe in comparison to boiled peanuts, it ain’t so bad.
None of this makes me want to try boiled okra or boiled peanuts. “Not SO slimy” is not a selling point.
That’s the one thing I remember about the one time I ate okra: how slimy it was. Pbfft!!!
I’ve heard that if you fry okra it’s not slimy, but I never tried.
I put okra in my gumbos when I make them. I don’t find them slimy, and it helps to thicken the soup.
I must have done it wrong.
My husband worked with a guy a few years ago who had one rule. He and his wife didn’t fart or burp in front of each other. What??? Good lord, that must be painful!
I feel compelled to get that old joke out of the way–the one where the palace guard says “How dare you fart in front of the Queen!” And the person says “I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize it was her turn.”
Go with the rattlesnake. And fart up a storm.
Well it’s sure enough Advantage Rangers now, but I have one bag left, and I’m all in.
Two things.
1
Do not eat raw peanuts they are carcinogenic.
2
From The BFG book by Roald Dahl. One Last Word invented by Roald Dahl himself
WHIZZPOP verb: To break wind.
It is great to be reading 📚 with my 8 year old great grandson.
Cheers
I’m not sure I’ve ever been offered any raw peanuts! I did grow one in my garden for about five seconds. It had been planted by a scrub jay and I weeded it, only recognizing it when I pulled up the semi-attached shell.
Only carcinogenic if they’ve been stored improperly and too long so that the Aspergillus flavus mold has had a chance to grow on them and produce aflatoxin. There’s nothing dangerous about the raw peanut itself. The simplyhealthyfamily website says “Whenever possible choose the 100% organic Valenciana and Jungle peanut variants because they’re supposed to be free from aflatoxins” but I can’t vouch for that. If you want some that are guaranteed aflatoxin-free, you could grow your own and eat them fresh. That would do it. The levels of aflatoxin allowed in foods is strictly regulated. Peanut butter made from moldy peanuts would still contain it.
They give me aflatutoxin.
Ahhh peanuts…I smile at former president Carter – if I remember correctly, he got out of his peanut business by the time he became president…Baseball plays on … go Ranmondbacks, go Diagers!
They’re go-go-GONE! Congratulations, Texas. It’s okay. I mean, they’d never won in all their 62 years.
My hubby does the cooking, and he chose veganism back in 2017. We fart, a LOT, and long ago gave up any pretense that we don’t. It happens more and more frequently in public too; I simply say, “Excuse me” and go on with whatever I was doing.
Can you imagine if sneezing or coughing (both far more hazardous to others’ health) had the same stigma attached? Why can’t society just accept that bodily expulsion as readily as a sneeze or cough?
Plus, you have all those interesting embouchure variations. The thing about holding back is it makes the whole thing so much more embarrassing. I supposed lots of people are embarrassed FOR Dave and me, but…
OMG, you have no idea what rabbit holes you’ve opened with “embouchure variations”. I played clarinet, our son (living with us and experiencing/appreciating our flatuent output) is a trumpet player—my mind is reeling.
But how else to explain the myriad variations not attributable to volume and pressure?
That just leaves temperature, yes?
At the risk of TMI, although I am not vegetarian, much less vegan, I do eat a melange of vegetables most nights for supper. I’ve noticed that when I eat more fibrous foods — like roasted vegetables with their skins — I am in the bathroom pooping several times in succession in the morning, as well as farting a lot. This doesn’t happen when I eat starchier fare. So I have to choose my suppers wisely if I have something happening the next day where I could embarrass myself.
Your seemingly quiet life is raucous within, ain’t it? I love you for that. I call it interpolative living.
I have a very rich internal life and my intestines are stars.
We have found that in our old age, foods that used to be no problem at all are now terrifically gaseous. Nobody told us that would come with the territory, but here we are.
Yes… getting old is SO glamorous. Arthritis, post-nasal drip, sagging, and farting. I see people who are older and seem to have it together, and I can put on a good game face for a while. But sometimes I will have to blow my nose and hork vigorously when I am out in public… which is scary to people post-covid. I’d like to tell them, “No! This is just what happens when you get old!” But alas, they have already run in horror, as I stumble after them, crablike, with my arthritic knee.
Hey thanks for reminding me that the Rangers (now World Series champs) are the reincarnation of our Washington Senators. My favorite player back in the day; first baseman Harmon Killabrew.
Wow. If ever I need an alias, I’m going with Hermione Killabottle.
Murr – Looks like you and I grew up in the same ‘neighborhood’. I remember going to a Senators’ game with my dad at the old Griffith Stadium when I was a little kid before they became the Minnesota Twins. I had forgotten they tried it again in DC before moving out west to Texas. LIke you, I wasn’t really sure who to root for…but glad the Rangers won. Now that baseball season is over it’s a bit of a let down… what do I do with my evenings now? Ah spring training is just a few months away.