My Lazy Writers for the month on the topic of inspiration.  Or maybe not inspiration, but inspiration for inspiration.  Or something like that.  Just read the piece.

Peanuts are my pep pills.  And I’m hooked.  I blame my mother.  When I used to come home from elementary school tired or upset, she’d give me a spoonful of peanut butter and everything would be better.  Strange, yes, but it worked.

There’s some logic to it.  Peanuts are a good source of unsaturated fat and protein, so a little peanut butter can give you a bit of an energy boost.  But there’s more to it than that.  It’s hard to think about anything else when you’re concentrating on not choking on a mouthful of peanut butter.  And if you’ve equated it with better days for as long as you can remember, it has strong therapeutic value.

This habit has never died.  I continued to self-medicate all through high school.  I’d eat a spoonful of peanut butter while doing my homework, while writing a research paper, before I took my finals…I even brought celery sticks with peanut butter to eat during the break when I took the SAT.  Now in college, I still eat peanut butter whenever I feel the need for a lift in energy and morale.  My roommates are slowly getting used to it.

In fact, that’s often one of the first things someone notices when they enter my dorm room.  “My God, that’s a lot of peanut butter,” they say, eyeing my stash of jars stacked on top of my wardrobe.  I think I’m down to three right now.  I’d better stock up before finals.

I use peanut butter to grease my mental wheels.  I have been told by the unenlightened that this is weird.  But it’s no weirder than any other superstition.  That is what it is, I realize that now.  Medical research has yet to prove that peanut products can increase creativity and improve mental functioning.  I, however, have had some of my best ideas and entered my most productive mind-sets after a dose of peanut butter.  I try not to think about this bizarre connection too much lest I sever it.  We’re all entitled to our own little eccentricities, aren’t we?