Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Goober Peas Prize

Emily Sardonia, quoted in Steven J. Zeitlin, Amy J. Kotkin and Holly Cutting Baker, eds., A Celebration of American Family Folklore: Tales and Traditions from the Smithsonian Collection (NY: Pantheon, 1982), p. 173—

Every time we came home from the store with a new jar of peanut butter, my dad, when we would go out of the room, would write the initials of the one he thought had been the best that week. And then the next morning, or whenever we'd go to open the peanut butter to put on some toast or something, he'd call the person, and they'd come running around, and he'd say, "Oh, look what's here!" And he would tell us that it was the little fairy that lived in the light downstairs, whose name was Matilda and that she had done it. That used to make you be good so you could get your name in the peanut butter.