i love jelly...

I love jelly. Strawberry, grape, apple. I love it. I could eat fresh peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every day forever. I have taught my sons to sing of its goodness. Peanut, peanut butter, and jelly! They sing it over and over, shouting the praises of peanut butter and jelly. But you know what I don't like? When the jelly has been on the bread too long. Like in your pigs in space lunch box at school. It's kind of warm and the jelly has sunk deep into the pores of the bread. What was once good is now spoiled. But what choice do we have? We eat it anyway. We remember what it was when it was new, but it seems there is nothing that we can do now. So we suffer through its dryness as it sticks to the roof of our mouth. We have lost the definition of bread and jelly and peanut butter, they soak together into a dry and difficult to eat substance we hardly recognize. The void between what we once new and what we are now experiencing is so vast it's hard to imagine that they are the same object. I never complained about it when I was a kid. I never said to my Mom, "there has to be a better way to prepare my sandwich so that when it is time for me to eat it it is not in this wretched state." I don't think I would have used the word wretched even if I wanted to make that statement. I am not entirely sure that I would use that word out loud today, but the deed is done. It never occurred to me that there was an alternative to soggy PB&J's, soggy PB&J's are a fact of life, that's how it is, and there is no way around it... But there is. It's simply a matter of whether or not we are willing to think creatively. Would the planet roll off its axis if we were to keep the peanut butter and jelly and bread separate until it was time to eat it? Sure, it would be more work to put the jelly in its own container as well as the peanut butter, not to mention the added expense of the plastic knives and the containers you would most certainly accidentally throw away. But the effort would be worth it and before long no one would even notice the fact that it was extra effort at all. After all, wouldn't it be easier to not prepare lunch at all? But the effort is worth it. It will be extra work, but the results? Everything we always wanted.