“What is it with you Americans, and your obsession with lip balm?”
Marc and I looked at each other. We stopped in our tracks; our chapsticks were coincidentally pressed against our dry, cracking lips.
“What about it?” I snapped back at Peter.
“You people across the pond are so obsessed with that stuff. I don’t understand it.”
Peter was Australian. He liked Vegemite. He didn’t understand.
“It keeps your lips soft!” Marc argued.
“Yeah but you have to take it out every five minutes!” Peter objected. “I always see Americans putting it on their lips all the time. You guys are crazy about that stuff. Did you know, if you never used lip balm you’d be absolutely fine? The more you use it the more you need to use it!”
Marc and I simply shrugged and kept liberally applying our chapstick.
“Lip balm, and peanut butter. I don’t get the whole deal with peanut butter either.”
Our mouths dropped. “What?! Are you kidding me?!” we yelled simultaneously.
“No way man,” I chided Peter. “Peanut stuff is the BEST.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing,” Marc added. “Chocolate covered peanut stuff is amazing.”
“All our chocolates have hazel nuts in them,” Peter replied. “I don’t even think I’ve ever tasted peanut butter.”
Marc and I began to reminisce about our favorite peanut-flavored things; how hard, and expensive it was to find peanut butter in Europe, how I’d been without a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup for the past few months…I told Marc about the time when I made my host brother a peanut butter and Nutella sandwich. It practically blew his mind.
We probably shouldn’t have been talking so loudly about peanut-flavored things while walking into the Dachau Concentration Camp.
