i hope he loves me more than peanut butter and jelly

You know what I've never liked? Goobers. You know, the pinstriped combination of peanut butter and jelly? Yeah, I definitely have never liked that, but I always wanted it when I was a kid. My mom told me it was nasty, but I wouldn't listen, so she got it to shut me up. I guess I didn't figure out that since I don't like grape jelly, eating peanut butter and grape jelly from the same jar would be awful for me. But I do love me some strawberry jelly/jam/preserves. Take your pick. If it's gelatinous and strawberry flavored, I'm all in. When I was a kid, I seemingly loved peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwiches more than anything else in the whole world...well, almost anything.

We have a lot of funny sayings for how much we love someone, don't we? I love you so much. So much that what? I don't know, just so much. I also love you to death? Really? That sucks. I love you a million bazillion. I don't know exactly what that means, but I definitely saw it written by a very close guy friend on his wife's wall on facebook, and I secretly make fun of him for it now. If he's reading this, then he surely knows it's him I'm making fun of. I love my wife, too, but not in made up quantities. Anyway, one thing that can be a measure of love is your willingness to die for that person. That's what Jesus said, and He knows love, so I won't argue. When I was a kid, I didn't know that was the ultimate love. I hadn't heard the song about how Jesus said that He loved me this much, spread his arms out and died. But in all fairness, if I had said that to my mom, spread out my arms, and died on her lap, I don't think she would have appreciated my clever understanding of the Gospel or my extreme love for her.

So when I was a kid, I wanted to express my ultimate love for my mom, so I picked the one thing that was greater than everything, and I told her that I loved her more than that. My greatest expression of love as a child was to look my mom in the eye and tell her, "I love you more than peanut butter and jelly." That is cheapened now, I guess, since I love a lot of people more than that sandwich. If I love you more than steak or cheesecake, you're doing really well. I hope when Jakob grows up that he loves me more than peanut butter and jelly, at least until he grows up.

Update: they now have strawberry jelly Goobers. I think I'll buy that next week.