She DOES Use Jelly
By Jen Lukenbill
On my personal MySpace page, I have listed “stealing jelly packets from restaurants” as one of my favorite things to do. This only briefly touches on an addiction that has both shamed and comforted me for many years. I’m not talking about stealing. I’m talking about jelly. Not petroleum jelly, either, smart asses.
When I say that I’m addicted to jelly, I mean that I consider it a meal. Though I don’t remember specifically when my love for jelly turned into an obsessive addiction, I believe it was after my parents got divorced (that and the weather are my most often-used scapegoats). My mom had always made some sort of biscuit-type thing with jelly in the center, and I don’t want to play the blame game, but… my dad never ate jelly. I lived with him after the divorce, and one can only take so much tuna and egg whites.
So I came to realize that if it was good food I was after, my mom’s house was the way to go. I would visit, then feel guilty about eating leftovers, and would grab the peach preserves and a spoon instead. Inevitably, my brother would throw a fit because I had eaten his favorite jelly and my mother would lovingly remind me that I had chosen to live with my father and she didn’t get child support for my jelly addiction.
In college, there were always two containers full of jelly at the salad bar – usually grape, which wasn’t my favorite, but beggars can’t be choosers. I would get a slice or two of bread to attempt to pass off the jelly as part of a roll-up or sandwich, and then pile a small mountain of jelly on it that would have fallen right through that bread had I tried to lift it. I didn’t have a lot of friends in college.
There was a time, after my son was born, that I didn’t think about jelly very often. In fact, I really didn’t think I had a problem anymore until I started my PB & J sandwich routine. They’re cheap, fast, and the best on-the-go lunch break meal ever. I ate one every day for the last year… until the Peter Pan crisis.
I’m not prepared to talk about Peter yet, but suffice it to say that I couldn’t have made it without my jelly. Jelly can mask an unfamiliar peanut butter flavor with ease, and I have come to realize that I only used the peanut butter as an accent, a supporting actor to my jelly’s lead.
So all of that brings us (don’t ask why) to last Monday. It was a bad day all around… my mom left for a trip to Albuquerque to visit our old baby-sitter, which led me to realize that I was really going to miss her. I had just found out that my brother and sister were going to Chicago for a four-day vacation with their respective mates in celebration of my sister’s boyfriend’s birthday, yet neither of them even called my husband last week when it was his birthday. It had been an insane day at work and my boss had started a new diet, so that eight-hour battle combined with rejection/dejection in learning of my brother and sister bonding and not telling me (I would just prefer to be everyone's favorite person, OK? Some people are like me... I looked it up!) had turned my mood black and my eyebrows drawn up in my patented "Jennifer Stare".
I saw the package almost immediately… it looked like a beacon, wrapped in white, shiny paper, perched jauntily on the porch. My husband beat me to it, excited to think it might be the birthday present my brother had promised to send him.
It wasn’t. When I opened the card and read that it was a gift from my cousin John, his wife Tracey and daughter Haley , I knew that whatever it was, it would be fun.
Shawn hovered over me as I took the paper off. What I saw upon peeling the paper off and letting the box see the light of day again was, simply, incredible.
The words on the box stated that it contained 200 restaurant jelly packets -- 80 strawberry, 80 grape and 40 mixed fruit. I now had those three flavors in addition to the peach preserves, huckleberry jam and raspberry all-fruit spread waiting patiently in the refrigerator.
My cousin John had made this his project after overhearing a rousing, intellectual debate in which I apparently confided that my sister was more of a peanut butter freak, whereas I couldn't pass up the jelly. I loved it, and him for thinking, then searching, then actually purchasing and mailing it, just to make me laugh. The worries that had plagued me all day melted away, and I realized that I would always feel close to him... he was that big brother I never had.
No, I'm not a social person, and choosing to be a hermit rather than drive hours to see a concert given by a band I'd never heard of appealed to me greatly. Of course Ryan and Shannon still love me, and I would love to think they liked my husband, so I'm going to smile and pretend I never knew a thing. Besides, my son has a baseball game the day they leave and I have to get some kind of vaccine at the clinic, so, darn it all, there goes the time.
All right, you've caught me. I just want EVERYONE to like me the best, because I'm selfish, OK? God!
But no matter what, I've now got a very large cardboard box taking up the majority of a cabinet shelf, and life is good, my friends. Life is good.
You'll have to excuse me, sadly; I have to frantically search for the perfect return present.
Remember this before I dismiss you: one day, when you're having horribly bad luck, there might just be a freakin' giant box of jelly waiting, all aquiver (get it?), in the box that is their hiding space, waiting to see your look of pure dreamy bliss as you discover the bounty that is yours.
Johnny, you're the king.
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