Today I learned that I'm not (totally) crazy.
So this is something that's been haunting me, but when I was a kid, I had the pleasure(?) of going out to the Cactus Club restaurant while visiting my cousin in Edmonton. I remember it being kind of ostentatious and wacky or whatever, but the thing that always fascinated me was that people were shucking peanuts and throwing their shells on the floor, like, everywhere. You'd shuffle through the peanut shells on your way to the bathroom and try to avoid slipping on the oily floors.
Now I have the worst memory of anyone I know, so over time this has just become one of those memories where you're not sure if it was real or if it was just a confabulation, because a couple of years ago I went to the Cactus Club again... but it was post-makeover/rebranding, as it had a sleek and sexy and super forgettable atmosphere; a cocktail bar with no defining features. It was like no trace of its former glory(?) remained.
It felt kind of weird to say it, but I had to acknowledge the peanuts somehow right?
The look on my friend's face said everything when I tried to explain that this place used to have hundreds of peanut shells just littering the floor and piling up in corners.
"You know that people are allergic to peanuts right?" She said, a little concerned and kind of weirded out.
It was a very good point, and I couldn't argue that it would generally be a bad idea to open a restaurant on the novelty of salty bar food that can almost certainly cause sudden death in a pretty significant portion of the population. Even my brother is deathly allergic to peanuts.
I kind of laughed it off while still feeling like I COULDN'T have imagined the peanuts, after all, how could my brain have conjured up something that seems so strange to me?
There was something about that look she gave me though, like I had said something so absurd that it couldn't have been rooted in reality, that I just closed the book on the concept, let it go and have regarded it as something that just makes me mildly uncomfortable to think about ever since...
...Until tonight.
I dont know why it took me so many years of discomfort and self-gaslighting to get up the will to Google it, but I guess it's totally a thing.
Like, not even uncommon in some areas. This idea that had mystified me for years was just common bar practice, especially in the 90s, until a bunch of slipping lawsuits started cropping up and people didn't feel like basking in garbage as much anymore.
I can finally rest now, exalted, safe with the knowledge that I need to trust myself. (Even with the weird shit.)
