I’ve always found peanut butter sandwiches to be a comfort food. I used to come home from school and have a sandwich and a tall glass of milk while I watched the afternoon cartoons. My father was the same way. He would come home from work and often the first thing he would do is make himself a snack. His favorite kind of sandwich was peanut butter and honey and I think all the honey he ate is what lead to him to get sweeter over the years. My mom on the other hand always loved mustard with her peanut butter. Whether her version of the snack influenced her personality is still a matter of debate but I can honestly say sometimes I was more scared of her than my dad. The biggest trial in my childhood was choosing whether to put honey, mustard, or either grape and strawberry jam on my sandwich. I even found myself splitting the sandwich into four sections and combining a little bit of everything on the bread so that I could have everything I wanted. Today, I still come home from work and make myself a peanut butter sandwich but over the years I’ve grown accustomed to the bitter taste of mustard complimenting the peanut butter. This ritual is one of three things that has always stayed constant in my life.
The second thing that has always remained the same as I’ve grown older is my love for superheroes. As a kid, I would watch cartoons that featured my favorite heroes or I’d spend hours in my room reading my newest comics. Luckily for me, as I’ve grown older the superhero renaissance really started to take off. Due to this renewal of mythos, I felt as if the world still had so much to offer and that good people always triumph over the trials in their life. To this day I’m still a hopeless romantic when it comes to a man in tights fighting for justice. Throughout my twenties, I had a wide variety of friends that ranged from potheads and party-goers to republicans and church-goers. My contact list was incredibly diverse and it wasn’t a surprise when one of my safer, more responsible, friends hit me up to check out Marvel Universe Live, an elaborately costumed “Disney on Ice-esque” performance starring some of the most popular superheroes at the time and was typically meant for kids 12 and under. Of course I wanted to go because I was a hopeless nerd hoping for a chance to take a peek at Starlord’s phaser. Eventually the night came and went and the performance was a blast. My little group enjoyed a hulking dose of wholesome entertainment that only a Disney production could provide. There were pyrotechnics and motorcycle stunts and heroes swinging all around the stage on wires doing kicks and flips. At the end, the good guys won and the heroes saved the day. We were feeling happy and delighted, the type of felling one might get from putting four different flavors on a peanut butter sandwich. Then we got to the parking lot. As much as we may wish for life to be as wonderful as the two-hour performance we had just seen, life has a twisted sense of humor. We searched up and down the aisles of the parking lot with my keys up in the air frantically pushing the “lock” button on the key pad hoping to hear the little “beep beep” noise that my car always made when I had lost it. It was hopeless though because we had realized the car was gone. Now, a lot of thoughts went through my head including wondering if the Green Goblin had swooped in to hijack the car, however that didn’t make sense since the goblin rides on a cool flying skateboard type thing and this type of crime seemed below him. Also, he wasn’t real. The true threat of the night was much more sinister and unforgiving. My car had been towed away and was being held ransom at an impound lot. The third thing to remain constant in my life is my response to bad situations. I am always hit with a mixture of anger and sadness and I tend to get quiet in bad situations. As we searched for an Uber and got a ride to the impound lot I was quiet, contemplating what I might be able to say to the villain who had stolen my baby. A bunch of curse words and $240 later we had rescued my car from the evil tow-man’s clutches and we were on our way home. No, good things don’t always happen to good people and sometimes no amount of fighting will change the course of events that we wish we could change. Sometimes we must realize that life is a lot like a peanut butter sandwich. We can try as hard as we want to turn mustard into honey but a bitter situation doesn’t have a sweet taste however, even a bitter sandwich can still taste good. As we drove home we made a list of all the good things that had happened that night. We realized that it was a good thing that we had the money on us to pay to get the car back. We talked about how we had just seen a great performance and how we were lucky to have gas to get back home. No, this wasn’t a sweet situation but it wasn’t all bad either. I felt like a kid again that night as I went from excited to despair. Once we rounded the corner to my street and pulled the car into the driveway I sighed and accepted that bad things happen to good people. I got out of the car and locked the doors behind me as I went inside, reached into the cupboard and found the bread. After this stressful day, I was going to need a peanut butter sandwich.
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Erick L. Graham Wood
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