The Great Peanut Fiasco

The Great PEANUT Fiasco

I don’t like baseball. I never have. I have never understood the enjoyment in watching an excruciatingly long, not to mention repetitive game that seems to be a mix of hitting objects, the ground included, with bats and playing catch, much like a five year old does at recess. Maybe I’m not a good American. Or maybe I just have better things to do with three hours of my time than sit through nine painful minutes on a hot, sweaty day of, drum roll please, baseball. Either way, I do not like it and I never have.

However, there was one day in my sixth grade year at Marie Murphy Junior High where, despite my negative feelings towards baseball, I decided to attend my very first baseball game at Wrigley field. Not only would it allow me to experience an actual baseball game, but I missed a day of school for it.

As I walked up to the attendance desk, I began to wonder what my first game would be like. I wonder if I’ll see Sammy Sosa? I wondered. I was so excited at the chance to look out onto the diamond and watch Sammy Sosa up to bat. He was my favorite baseball player, but this was only because he was the only one whose name and team I truly knew. Ask me who Kerry Wood is and the only reason that I could tell you his team would be because of the fact that I am writing this paper.
I stood in front of the monstrous desk and handed the secretary the note excusing me from school.


HER: Oh, and where are you going today?

ME: I’m going to the Cubs game!

To this day, I am not surprised that she did not send me straight back to class, shouting that I am a student whose purpose is to be in a classroom. I also wonder why I did not lie and develop a legitimate excuse fit for missing a day of school.

“I have a dentist appointment, and it’s a biggun. I gotta get there before everyone else does!” Yeah, because everyone is just so eager to have their teeth picked and prodded.


At that point, if she had told me to get back to class, I would have just stood on my toes, leaned across the top of the desk with a dark look on my face and say, “Are you trying to get on my bad side?”


The secretary probably would have just stared at me, debating whether or not it was smart, let alone safe to send me back to class where I’d be in, god forbid, public.


She handed the slip back to me and surprised me with a jealous smile and a roll of the eyes.


HER: Wow, lucky you! I hope you have fun!


She was a pretty damn cool secretary.


As I walked outside and hauled my backpack and my tiny self into the backseat of my Dad’s car—I was still “too tiny” to sit in the front, so my parents claim—and gave the “ok” to leave the school and head for the city, never once looking back or contemplating possible consequences of missing my classes.


Entering Wrigley field was like entering the Emerald City...without all the green and over-exuberant dancers. I walked into the mouth of the structure and into a different world. Alleys and lanes snaked up the concrete stadium, each containing a menagerie of kiosks, fast-food restaurants, and gift shops selling everything from baseballs to t-shirts to bobble-headed stuffed animal bears that sported blue Cubs jerseys and caps. My eyes scanned every little detail.


As we sat down, the only thing on our mind was food. My Dad stood up and walked back into the massive building to get a tray full of food and drinks for himself, my brother and I. At first, this was not a problem. He won’t be long.

Thirty minutes later, I felt like a baby bird, eagerly waiting for its father to return with a big juicy worm. It was the wait that felt as though it would never end.

Suddenly a light bulb went off. About ten rows down from me, I caught sight of the peanut guy, waving a bag of the salty snack in his hand and advertising through yelling. I smiled and waved at him. He brought his arm back and, like a catapult, sent it flying my way. It fell lightly into my hands.

“Nice catch!” the man behind me commented. I smiled and thanked him politely before tearing open the bag and devouring several defenseless peanuts.

Any die-hard baseball fan who goes to every game of every season of every year knows very well that peanuts are not included in the ticket cost. You have to pay around two dollars per bag: two dollars that I did not have and that I did not know I needed.

The lady next to me tapped me on the shoulder with her fingernail. I looked up slowly, still chewing the peanuts like a cow chews its cud.


LADY: You have to pay the man, honey.


I pressed my eyebrows together and furrowed my brow, her logic confusing me. Here my dad was paying all this money to get three tickets to the baseball game, and the cost of peanuts was not included in this hefty price?

LADY: Do you have money?

I wore a worried expression and shook my head, giving a look of fear rather than an explanation.

The kind lady smiled and nodded, pulling two dollars out of her wallet and passing them down the isle to the peanut guy, who, at this point, seemed relieved that the energy he had exerted into tossing me that bag of peanuts was not in vain. He took the two dollars and continued on his merry way trying to out-sell the other venders wandering the stadium.

It’s competitive in the world of peanut vending.

But unlike the peanut guy, I could not run. All I could do was quietly, and gratefully, thank the lady sitting next to me and slink down in my chair. I glanced at the peanuts, my interest in them long gone. The bag that had once appeared to me as relief from hunger now appeared as something grotesque, something that I was more tempted to throw onto the field than eat. I held it in my hand as if it were a pile of slugs and started to cry. My eyes welled up, but I never let the tears to roll down my cheeks, too proud to show my brother that I was not only weak, but also impaired of peanut knowledge.

About two minutes later, my dad returned, walking gingerly into the isle, avoiding the feet and gullets that hung into the pathway before him. He sat down, a tray full of food in his hands. But I was not hungry. I was humiliated. I wanted to go home.

When I told him what happened, he was more amused than irritated. He poked fun at me for a moment before holding out the cardboard tray of food in his lap, which, to my great dismay, contained a fat bag of peanuts.

I glared at the fresh bag of peanuts in his tray and looked back at my own. It was ripped open and appeared to be laughing at me, the bag being the mouth, the peanuts being its over-salted, malformed teeth. For the remainder of the game, I kept that taunting bag squeezed in between my brother’s seat and my own.


I could say that I learned the importance of always taking money to a big game, even if you think you won’t need it. I could say that I learned to value patience. But if I did, I’d be lying. And that’s just it. That’s what I learned: the importance of the occasional lie. Had I told my Dad that I had thought I had money, the incident would have seemed as thought it was the result of human error; not stupidity or oblivious and ditzy as to baseball games and the venders that patrol them like sharks patrol a reef, waiting to make a kill. Maybe then he and my brother wouldn’t return from a game with bags of peanuts just for me. Maybe then I could look at peanuts and not see the word “shame-nuts” written on the bag. Maybe then I wouldn’t be revealing this to my whole English class...

Believe me, if I ever go to another game, I will bring with me one hundred dollars. In cash. But every time I picture myself walking into Wrigley field, I hear not only my brother and my Dad continuously taunting me with the great peanut fiasco, but I also see that same vender coming up the isle and somehow recognizing me.
“Hey look,” he’d yell, pointing his salty, peanutty finger at me. “It’s the girl who didn’t pay!” I would then receive a shower of peanuts from the angry fans around me.
I think it’s safe to say that I won’t be going to a baseball game anytime soon.