Dear Mrs. Fitzfisher,
Hi, my name is Jake Layton. Actually, you already know that. Anyway I don’t know whether or not I should have started my what-is-the-best-invention-of-all-time paper with “dear”, since I’ve never had to write a book report before. I’ve always had Dalton Lang write them for me because he sits next to me alphabetically and he can be persuaded to do anything for a few dollars. That kid’s a riot. Once, in middle school, Dalton ate a beetle for fifty cents. And even though Coach got all mad and made us quit it, Dalton got to keep that fifty cents. So that’s why I’ve never written a book report before even though I’m in tenth grade.

But now Snooty Fruity Alice Wendelkin is informing me that this isn’t a book report, because I didn’t read a book on it. It’s an opinion report. Thanks a lot for reading over my shoulder, Snooty. Real mature.

Anyway, in my opinion, the best invention of all time is peanut butter. Some of the other guys on the team chose football or basketball. But football didn’t get invented, it got discovered, like gravity. So when I was thinking about the best invention ever, I thought, it’s probably going to be what I use most. And what do I use the most? Peanut butter. You might think I’m crazy, but consider it for a sec. What are the downsides to peanut butter? There are none, right? First of all, it is a sandwich spread. A delicious sandwich spread. And if you’re texture obsessive, peanut butter can still make you happy, ’cuz it comes in crunchy or creamy. Thanks to PB, jelly isn’t just a useless fruit gel that nobody really likes. Every kid in the whole wide world has eaten a PB+J sandwich for lunch at some time or another. True fact.

Alright… Alice isn’t reading my report anymore. She’s so stuck up. The issue is… it’s just… well, she’s kind of… cute. Don’t tell any of the guys on the team that I like her. If she’d just take a chill pill I might could ask her out.

Anyway. Peanut butter. I don’t know if you’ve ever had peanut butter, Mrs. Fitzfisher, but you should try it. It's cheap and easy to make lunch with. Stick the knife in the jar, place it on some bread, scrape scrape, BOOM you have a sandwich. It also strengthens your bones. Well, not directly. But when you eat peanut butter it's really sticky, right? And when it's that sticky it glues your mouth together? Like cement, right? And to wash it down, what do you drink? MILK. What does milk do? Strengthen your bones! With calcium and crap! So peanut butter is good for you. And I bet peanuts have some sort of health benefits too.

And peanuts are just awesome. They remind you of history. Like George Washington Carver. When you read about him in third grade you're like whoa, he's cool, he made soap out of peanuts. And he invented peanut butter, too, so eating it is like studying. Almost. Oh, and Dr. Carver didn't patent peanut butter, because he said all food belongs to God—so peanut butter is good for the soul. True fact.

Alice knows a lot of true facts. She’s new, just like me. Just moved in from California. She has a lot of sweet stories from living near Hollywood and stuff. “I met Johnny Depp!” “I got to be on the set of Avatar!” “I got arrested for stalking Leonardo DiCaprio!” The guys say it gets on their nerves. But I think her stories rock. She’s just… ahh. There’s something about her, I just don’t know what.

I have to admit, though, she looks like a dweeb. The way she walks, the way she dresses, the way she hunches her shoulders up and glares out over the rims of her filthy glasses. She clutches her books to her chest like they’re the only raft left on the Titanic. I thought it was charming. The guys didn’t. She’s too much of a tattler. Goody two-shoes.

Teacher’s pet. Always saying “you can’t do that” or “quit acting like kindergarteners”. All in a really shrill voice. It’s like, pipe down, Hermione!

I could listen to her voice all day. I find it melodic. (That’s one of our English II vocab words.)

Sorry—Titanic. Alice informs me that the names of ships should be italicized. You can’t spend a second around her without being told what you’re doing wrong. Thank God, she didn’t read that whole paragraph. What if someone found out I liked her? I would stop it if I could, but she’s in my thoughts every second! I’m nuts about her!

Ha ha. Nuts. Peanuts.

I mean, it’s not like I could actually date her. There’s no way she would come to football games and parties and things, squealing next to all the cheerleaders. She’d probably sit in the bleachers, legs tucked neatly beneath her chair, working on AP chemistry homework… the rest of the crowd would explode into cheers as I hit a touchdown—“Jake! Jake! Jake!”—but she would remain in her own little world, oblivious to everything around her, curls spilling over her shoulders. In the stadium lights, her green eyes would twinkle like stars. Finally, she would realize what was happening and look up and give me a small smile. Not a big one. She doesn’t care about football. But just like, “Good job, Jake.” That kind of smile. And her California-tanned skin would look even smoother under the night sky. Creamy, just like peanut butter.

Everyone else in the world seems to like crunchy peanut butter. But I like my peanut butter creamy. That’s the problem. Alice is creamy peanut butter. And my friends don’t see that creamy peanut butter is beautiful too.
Alice informs me that people who are allergic to nuts probably don’t think that peanut butter is useful for anything. Alice is never wrong—she’s really smart. But this time, she couldn’t be more wrong. Peanut butter has lots of useful purposes! Like tricking your dog into eating its flea pills. By the time it goes like, “Wait, is this peanut butter drugged?!” you’re like “BOOYAH, SAY GOODBYE TO YO FLEAS, DOG!” So anyone can be a vet with peanut butter pretty much!

In fact, I just remembered another use for peanut butter! I’m on a roll today! Vermin catching. You stick a glob of peanut butter in a trap and put it in the attic and there you go, you caught yourself a raccoon. The coon is all like, oh hey, free peanut butter, cool, but then you kill it and there you go. Your house is clean as a whistle. Or, you could let it free outside to live and frolic and whatever. That makes you an animal rights activist. So peanut butter is good for humanity.

Thanks to peanut butter, the world is a better place. True fact.

Love,

Jake Layton