Back in the day when childhood literacy was actually a thing, one of my favorite things to read was poetry by the inimitable Shel Silverstein.

To this day, I remember the tale of “The Peanut Butter King.”

That poem gave me nightmares for weeks.

Just look at those teeth.

Honestly, it still gives me the heebie-jeebies, and back then, I full on thought that if I ate an uncrustable my jaw would be cemented shut for twenty years.

I still look at Jiffy with suspicion.

Why am I talking about this?

Welp.

Confession time.

Quarantine has led to bingeing.

How many sweet potatoes have I eaten?

Roughly enough to instigate another Irish Potato Famine.

My apologies to the people of Ireland.

Seriously, though.

All this down/idle time had led to me entertaining appetites I know aren’t the best for me, and the tale of The Peanut Butter King perfectly captures the problems with giving our appetites free reign.

So!

With that being said, if you, like me, appreciate poignant yet ridiculous things, let’s have a look at the wisdom of Shel Silverstein.

The poem begins:

I’ll sing you a poem of a silly young king
Who played with the world at the end of a string,
But he only loved one single thing—
And that was just a peanut-butter sandwich.

“…he only loved one single thing–and that was just a peanut-butter sandwich.”

If this was 2015, we might be tempted to say that the peanut-butter sandwich was his bae.

Thank the Lord that word didn’t survive the decade.

However, I’m using it now since the PB sammie was, in the King’s estimation, really and truly before anything else.

Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with peanut-butter (or potatoes for that matter) or almost any appetite you may want to indulge.

However…

Problems arise when our desires–our appetites–get out of order, and if you don’t want to take my word for it, I point you to someone who far outstrips me in every way and whose writings will likely lift the roof off your brain.

Augustine.

In brief, The Bishop of Hippo, both in his Confessions as well as in City of God, stresses the importance of having “ordered loves” and the scourge of having disordered ones.

Ordered love brings life.

Disordered love is the heart of vice.

And when you allow the latter to run free, things, as we shall see, are going to go poorly.

The poem continues:

His scepter and his royal gowns,
His regal throne and golden crowns
Were brown and sticky from the mounds
And drippings from each peanut-butter sandwich.

Whatever is “bae” to you will inevitably start to affect the rest of what you do.

You may attempt to bib yourself, but let’s not kid ourselves.

Any attempts to cordon off what is high and chief amongst your priorities is not going to work.

Also!

An important aside:

If you’re trying to play Don’t Let The Peas Touch! (fantastic book, highly recommend), with your life by separating out what is dearest to you from all the rest, might I suggest that that thing needs to be double checked.

It’s like when someone won’t bring their bae/beau/boo/whathaveyou around to meet their friends or family.

Something smells fishy.

Similarly, if your peanut-butter sandwich equivalent is something you don’t want oozing out, that’s a good indicator that maybe you need to check yourself.

Because, friend.

I am telling you it will drip and stick all over your life, and if it isn’t virtue but vice…

Well.

Do you remember Augustus Gloop?

The great, big, greedy nincompoop?

Yeah… that’ll be you.

The poem continues!

His subjects all were silly fools
For he had passed a royal rule
That all that they could learn in school
Was how to make a peanut-butter sandwich.

Here’s the thing.

I know “You do you!” is the refrain of the age, but if we’ve learned anything from COVID-19, it’s that our individual actions have externalities.

And just as our actions have externalities, so too do our appetites.

For example, in my house, we have one vegetarian, one chronically ill, dietary restrictions out-the-wazoo person, one “I will not eat unless there’s meat” person, and my poor mother who’s just like “why is everyone so picky?”

Our refrigerator is basically the battleground for World War III simply because our varying appetites take up space in each other’s lives.

This is true with all kinds of appetites, and if, as we have already seen, your appetites have you rolling around in muck, mire, and vice…

Well, no man is an island, and the things you prioritize will, without fail, affect other people’s lives.

So PSA: get your appetites in order before you tar some poor friend, family member, referee, or innocent bystander.

Onwards!

He would not eat his sovereign steak,
He scorned his soup and kingly cake,
And told his courtly cook to bake
An extra-sticky peanut-butter sandwich.

You know what this reminds me of?

When my childhood was wrecked by Sandra Bullock’s husband cheating on her.

Like…

SIR.

You had SANDRA STEAK.

QUEEN CAKE and you cheated.

You ate a peanut butter sandwich.

I will never understand.

It doesn’t make sense!

And yet…

I’ve definitely done that.

Chosen something else when I could’ve or already had something better because my appetites were out of order.

Ergo.

I was an idiot.

See, it is 100% true that you cannot have your cake and eat it too.

While, as a child, I may have been convinced there was such a thing as a dessert stomach…

The stomach is tragically unitary and finite.

So when you prioritize an inferior appetite, you have to–have to–say no to superior appetites.

And everyone else in the room will be shaking their heads, thinking…

What a fool.

We continue!

And then one day he took a bite
And started chewing with delight,
But found his mouth was stuck quite tight
From that last bite of peanut-butter sandwich.

At last.

The rubber has hit the road, and the Peanut Butter King is now faced with the hard reality we all know to be true:

Eventually, your appetites catch up with you.

It might not be today or tomorrow, but someday that indulgence, that disordered love, that peanut-butter sandwich, will come home to roost.

Your metabolism quits.

You take a tainted hit.

Your victims have enough.

The IRS wises up.

Congratulations.

Your appetite’s caught up.

So take a care and consider the parts of your life that might just be setting you on the path to self-destruct.

With that cheery reminder out of the way, we enter the final stretch of what you are probably now thinking is some pretty messed-up children’s poetry!

His brother pulled, his sister pried,
The wizard pushed, his mother cried,
“My boy’s committed suicide
From eating his last peanut-butter sandwich!”

The dentist came, and the royal doc.
The royal plumber banged and knocked,
But still those jaws stayed tightly locked.
Oh darn that sticky peanut-butter sandwich!

The carpenter, he tried with pliers,
The telephone man tried with wires,
The firemen, they tried with fire,
But couldn’t melt that peanut-butter sandwich.

With ropes and pulleys, drills and coil,
With steam and lubricating oil—
For twenty years of tears and toil—
They fought that awful peanut-butter sandwich.

Then all his royal subjects came.
They hooked his jaws with grapplin’ chains
And pulled both ways with might and main
Against that stubborn peanut-butter sandwich.

Each man and woman, girl and boy
Put down their ploughs and pots and toys
And pulled until kerack! Oh, joy—
They broke right through that peanut-butter sandwich

Huzzah!

Time (twenty years) and teamwork (the whole freaking kingdom) were eventually able to undo the damage caused by a disordered appetite.

But here’s the thing.

As we shall see, time and the intervention to end all interventions are no guarantee you won’t get right back on your peanut Butter Sandwich.

The poem concludes…

A puff of dust, a screech, a squeak—
The king’s jaw opened with a creak.
And then in voice so faint and weak—
The first words that they heard him speak
Were, “How about a peanut-butter sandwich?”

Are.

You.

Kidding.

Me.

I think it’s time for a new king.

BRING OUT THE GUILLOTINE!

Seriously.

Doesn’t that just make you want to punch him in the mouth?

He can drink his sandwich through a straw from here on out.

I’m not a violent person, I swear.

It’s just… I can’t stand the thought of someone so clearly not learning their lesson.

It’s egregious.

And yet…

If I’m honest, I get it.

As someone who experienced a very long stint of addiction, I intimately understand the hold appetites can have.

However…

I also know that our appetites are in many ways habituated.

Put simply:

When you feed something, it grows.

The PB King fed and entertained his appetite for peanut butter sandwiches his entire life.

He’d trained himself for that and no other.

Why wouldn’t he return to it at first chance?

In fact, you can easily imagine he’d been waiting twenty long years just for that next sandwich.

And you might say,

“But he hadn’t had a peanut butter sandwich all that time! Shouldn’t he have gotten over it?”

Au contraire.

For one thing, his abstention was an involuntary one which in no way addressed the underlying problem of his disordered appetite.

It just took the fulfillment of the desire off the table for a time.

But more importantly!

Even if he’d willing not eaten anything for twenty years, avoiding an appetite is not the same thing as addressing an appetite.

Put another way:

Starving yourself doesn’t work.

It’s not:

“THAT PB SAMMIE DID ME DIRTY–I WILL NEVER EAT AGAIN!”

That’s stupid.

Excising a destructive appetite or ordering a disordered one is only the first step because simply clearing the appetite away without putting something else–something better–in it’s place is a recipe for disaster.

As anyone who’s studied dictatorial regimes will know, power vacuums are no bueno, and since the King likely hadn’t planned to put anything else in the peanut butter sandwich’s place, it’s no wonder he went right back to the thing that had caused him (and a lot of other people) a fair bit of pain.

He didn’t want to change.

Arguably, he’d never even tried.

He saw nothing wrong with his appetite.

It was fine.

Is that you?

That was me for a very long time.

But no longer!

And if even I can improve, so too can you 🙂

With all that being said…

Let’s Conclude With Questions

What are your deepest appetites?

What are you eating?

What are you feeding?

Is it the best for you?

If not, what are you going to do?

Are you waiting until it oozes out of you?

Until the people around you start to feel it too?

Are you turning away better things?

Are you hoping people try to save you from you?

Would you listen to them if they tried?

Or would you shrug them off and say,

“I’m fine.”

Dear friend.

Only you can answer those questions, and only you can decide that you no longer want to feed a disordered appetite.

Because if not you, then who? And if not now, then when?

I encourage you to think about it.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for this week!

Thank you again so much for taking the time to read, and please feel free to subscribe and share 🙂