(Long Island, NY) I am a confirmed bachelor. Proof of this is in my deplorable habits of drinking milk right from the carton, and eating peanut butter right from the jar. I’ve often been told that if I ever move in with a woman, I’ll be required to give up such bachelor-flat habits in favor of something a bit more cosh.
Well, it looks like I’ve adjusted at least one of those habits ahead of time, thanks in part to a little bug called Salmonella.
I came into my little apartment ravenously hungry after a hard day’s research on a set of news stories I was working on. Naturally I did what I always do when I’m too hungry or too lazy to properly feed myself; I whipped off the lid of a jar of peanut butter and dig right in. Sometimes I even use a utensil.
Crunchy peanut butter has a particular texture that the true addict knows well. It’s smooth, yet lumpy; the flavor sweet-but-almost-savory. When you are as hungry as I was that day you aren’t taking any time to dig the flavors, you’re just shoveling the sticky mess into your gob and trying to kill those desperate starvation pangs.
On this occasion, however, my mania for peanut butter didn’t prevent me from detecting a foreign object in the sticky mess. I went from eating machine to full stop in a matter of seconds.
You know that feeling you have where you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if you move so much as an inch, the entire world will explode? Or maybe your head will fall off? That’s the feeling I had when I figured out that there was more than just peanut butter in my peanut butter.
A mouthful of sticky goop is a tricky thing to negotiate. You can either open wide and dislodge the contents onto your kitchen floor, or you can poke your tounge around inside your mouth hunting for god-knows-what, or you can dig about with your fingers to try and locate the foreign something-or-other.
I think in my haste to get the object out of my mouth, identify it, and run screaming for the nearest hospital, I probably did a combination of all three. I did manage to stop freaking out long enough to realize that I wasn’t cut, or otherwise damaged internally by what found its way into my mouth. But once I had the peanut butter separated away from the object in question, I had a different problem to deal with.
Sheer and utter revulsion.
What I had dislodged from my mouth looked very much like a large man’s fingernail. Picture an enormous truck driver, hands the size of canned hams, with an immaculate manicure except for one big, rude middle fingernail missing – torn off the finger by some clumsy accident.
That is what was lurking inside my peanut butter, what found its disgusting way into my mouth.
I immediately called the Peter Pan 1-800 number on the jar to report my fingernail problem. The operator said she would mail me an envelope to send in the jar, the fingernail, and remaining peanut butter. The most amazing thing was that they told me I’d be getting a few free jars of “replacement peanut butter” or some such thing.
That night, I experienced an evil attack on my digestion which I won’t describe here. Suffice it to say that I was quite ill. A few days later I saw a news item announcing the recall of a big load of Peter Pan peanut butter, due to salmonella contamination. Imagine my surprise – well, not THAT surprised, really- my disgust, and the complete explanation of my digestive attack!
My friends were naturally concerned, but I told them that I was, so far, alive and well. But when I remembered what the 1-800 operator told me, I felt a creeping dread moving up my spinal column.
I had jars of peanut butter coming.
Stephen King can’t write enough pages to describe the utter terror I had of eating another mouthful of food from the company I felt had just days before ravaged my digestive tract with their evilly tainted glop.
I’d say I’ve sworn off the stuff completely, but the truth is, I’ve simply sworn off any product which bears the name of a whimsical, flying stage character with funny breeches. I shall never again ingest such foodstuffs. Instead I now migrate to brands with sillier names, but without the taint of a recent recall of infected goop.
I knew I had to contact the company. For a few hours I agonized over what to say to them–I wanted it to be pithy-but-rude, and communicate the point as effectively as possible while administering the proper amount of combative, yet still slightly nauseous attitude. In the end, I decided to tell them to take their replacement peanut butter and eat it themselves. Let the punishment fit the crime, I say.
