Tag Archives: peanut brittle

Crunchy

Crunchy: (adj) crisp or brittle.

Here I go again, bathing in the acid of honesty.

I don’t know why I do this. I could lie to you. You’d never know. It isn’t like you’re trying to vet me for government service.

I could deceive you like crazy.

But for some reason, I’ve settled in on this “schtick” of candor.

Truthfulness.

Honest, even if it makes me look a little dumb. Because I will tell you right now, looking a little dumb is better than lying and looking a lot dumb.

I don’t like crunchy things.

I just don’t.

People like their cereal crunchy.

Not me. I let mine sit around until it drowns, and the coroner arrives to confirm that it’s fully floppy and dead. As a kid, I often ate other children’s cereal they had rejected—“because it wasn’t crunchy anymore.”

Maybe that’s the root cause of my obesity. At least it would be fun to blame it on that.

I don’t like crunchy chicken.

You know—what they call “extra crispy?”

My French fries can be a little crispy—but if they’re a lot crispy, doesn’t that just mean they’re burned?

And I never got the idea of a crunchy candy bar. Has anyone ever tasted a Milky Way? No crunch anywhere. Just ecstasy.

I don’t like crunchy.

I will eat peanut brittle—only because I know that on the thirteenth chewing in my mouth, it turns into that delicious peanut butter paste I love so much.

Crunchy crunches.

And crunching is not a positive word. (Just consider your car.)

I don’t like to put my teeth into a reluctant apple. I know it sounds silly, but when an apple insists on being crisp and crunchy, I feel it’s just resistant to being eaten. Sometimes it even adds a sour disposition to match the crunch.

I have no criticism for people who like crunchy things, but my philosophy is, if you find yourself in the middle of the crunch…

Just pour on more milk and wait awhile.

 

funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

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Cavity

Cavity: (n) a decayed part of a tooth.

I was a fully grown man with bills and everything when a dentist was finally honest with me.

He looked into my mouth, peering at cavities, and produced a slight grimace. Being a good Mid-Western boy, I closed my jaw and quickly
 apologized for my bad teeth.

He just smiled at me and said, “There’s nothing you can do about it. Some people are born with good teeth. And some people keep me in business.”

I have used floss, every kind of toothpaste known to man, and I’ve even brushed my teeth with baking soda.

Them tooths just do what they want to do.

I feel like my teeth stopped at an emotional age of about fifteen years of age, and they just lounge around, do whatever they please, and only become upset if you bother them too much.

So several years ago, when I asked my dentist what he thought about the teeth that remained in my mouth, the same chap replied, “Do for them what you can. But I wouldn’t be in any hurry to put dentures in there, because they’re a real pain in the ass. Well actually, pain in the head.”

So my teeth and I have a truce: they agree not to bother me as long as I abstain from peanut brittle.

 

 

 

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Aboral

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Aboral: (adj.) relating to or denoting the side or end that is furthest from the mouth, especially in animals that lack clear upper and lower sides, such as echinoderms.

I don’t know why this word made me think about the Mississippi River. I stopped worrying about the weird tendency of my mind to leap to bizarre inclinations years ago, and have chosen to believe it a virtue rather than a vice.

But the Mississippi River has a mouth. It’s somewhere up there in Minnesota, among those stoic German-Lutheran folk, who would certainly be willing to be the “salt of the earth” if their doctors had not told them to avoid too much sodium.

But the further you get away from the mouth, the less German and Lutheran the Mississippi River becomes. It winds its way through the heartland, flirting with Illinois, kissing up to St. Louis, where it throws a quick wave at the Gateway Arch, careens down through Memphis, listening to jazz and smelling the barbecue, but also remembering some of the tragedies, such as the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Having started at its mouth, it now gets deeper into its aboral quest, as it swims its way through the south, landing at a very un-Minnesota-like destination, of New Orleans. Desiring international credibility, it eventually dumps itself into the Gulf of Mexico.

It is a flow of water which separates this country from east to west. Yes, east of the Mississippi live most of the population, insisting they prefer wide-open spaces, while clumping together like year-old peanut brittle. West of the Mississippi, there are regions that appear to be still available for marauding buffalo and Native American tribes.

The Mississippi River is a divider without being divisive. It does something that nobody seems to be capable of achieving–dribbling from one culture to another without preconceived ideas or bigotry. As it goes from its mouth to more aboral locations, it wiggles through accents, belief systems, cultures and states with ease and comfort–absent favoritism.

It is a citizen of both Minnesota and Mardi Gras, without apology.

I’m not so sure if those at the mouth would approve of the aboral destination of the river. But the river does not ask permission. It has learned a valuable lesson:

Go with the flow.