December 03, 2022 | Read Online

Poison Peanuts.

What gopher hunting can teach us about patience.

Cole Schafer
December 03, 2022

The Previews...

Meet Cute is a creative writing guide designed to help you 1). fall in love with the craft of writing and 2). become the kind of writer that readers will fall head over heels for. It was written by myself and illustrated by an A.I.'s interpretation of Roy Lichtenstein (Google him). I'm obviously biased but I think it'd be a splendid Christmas gift to yourself or for any aspiring writers in your life.

The Movies...

Before the invention of gopher traps, folks whose yards were tormented by the tiny burrowing beasts had to dispose of them the old-fashioned way: with three shovels, a lawn chair and a mound of patience.

According to my late grandmother, my grandfather was a cold-blooded gopher assassin.

The moment he caught one raising hell in his yard––the tell-tale sign usually being long, meandering lines of upturned soil––he'd put out a lawn chair near the bulk of the tunnels, he'd lay his shovels longways over the top of his lap and he'd wait.

After an hour or so of waiting, his eyes would catch tiny tremors in the upturned soil––indicating that a gopher was boring a tunnel beneath the surface––and he'd stand up, hustle over to the tremor and go about his butchering.

He'd thrust the first shovel in front of the tremor to halt the gopher's tunneling. He'd thrust the second shovel behind the tremor to cut off the gopher's escape. And, he'd thrust the third shovel smack-dab in the middle of the two shovels to dispose of the gopher altogether.

That probably made you squeamish.

Your squeamishness is the very reason that brands like Victor––a world leader in pest control––invent products like Poison Peanuts.

Today, folks plagued by a gopher problem no longer have to get their hands dirty nor patiently sit in a lawn chair underneath the beating sun for hours at a time with three shovels laid out across their laps like hungry harpoons.

Instead, they just scatter a few Poison Peanuts around the Azaleas and, well, no more gopher(s).

(This feels a hell of a lot crueler to me than the old shovel-guillotine trick but that's neither here nor there...)

Everywhere you look, there are Poison Peanuts for life's inconveniences. While these quick-fix solutions save us time, money and dirty hands, they also come with a great cost: patience.

These days, patience is a superpower that very few of us possess. We've been conditioned to be wildly impatient because there is big money to be made off of our impatience.

Uber Eats generated $8.3 billion in 2021 because humankind was too impatient to slip on a pair of pants.

There isn't anything intrinsically wrong with enjoying a steak dinner delivered straight to your front door in the click of a button... until you assume that everything you want and desire should be right at your fingertips.

This might all sound a bit extreme, but take a moment to reflect on the areas in your own life where you find yourself getting discouraged because you can't find any Poison Peanuts.

Here's an example from my own...

For the past few months, I've been trying to trim away at my waistline. It's astonishing how much easier it is to gain weight than it is to lose it. I weighed in at 210 lbs at the end of the summer and I made it a goal to drop 20 lbs.

Poison Peanut thinking gave me the false assumption that the weight would just melt off of me in a few weeks if I hit the gym hard and watched what I ate.

In reality, here's what my weigh-ins each week have looked like...

210 lbs

209 lbs

211 lbs

209 lbs

208 lbs

207 lbs

206 lbs

207 lbs

205 lbs

204 lbs

203 lbs

202 lbs

200 lbs

199 lbs

197 lbs

196 lbs

200 lbs

Goddamn you, Thanksgiving.

Losing 10 lbs in 18 weeks doesn't feel "successful" until I consider that in 18 more weeks, I will have achieved my goal.

The desire for quick-fix solutions causes a lot of folks to drop out of the race at the 2-3 week mark (there is no Uber Eats for weight loss).

But, looking beyond just the waistline, the danger in impatience is that there are no Poison Peanuts for the human challenges where achievement matters most.

There are no Poison Peanuts for a happy, healthy relationship.

There are no Poison Peanuts for a strong, healthy body.

There are no Poison Peanuts for a calm, collected mind.

There are no Poison Peanuts for a deep, fulfilling vocation.

For these kinds of triumphs, you've got to lather your schnoz down with sunscreen, sit your ass in the lawn chair and patiently wait for the Earth to tremble.

But, I digress.

By Cole Schafer.

P.S. If you're new to Sticky Notes, you can subscribe here.

Just in time for Christmas...

Need a few goodies to stuff in your lover's stocking? Keep reading.

If they love poetry, grab a copy of One Minute, Please?, After Her or Guillotine.

If they're struggling to face their fears, pick them up a brass reminder.

If they're an aspiring writer, enroll them in Meet Cute.

If they're interested in advertising, it's never too cold for Snow Cones.

If they're looking for lady luck, buy them lunch with Mr. Draper.

Or, just get me drunk

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Poison Peanuts.

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