We keep a bowl of peanuts-in-the-shell on our kitchen counter. Nearly everybody that comes over cracks a few and munches while they're here. When we first fill the bowl I've noticed that there are mostly really good, big, fat peanuts on the top - the kind with at least two and sometimes three nuts in a shell. So, for the effort of cracking them open, the rewards are max for these top-of-the-pile goobers.
As you work your way down, though, you start getting into more and more of the single-nut shells. It takes the same amount of energy to crack these open as it does for the multi-nut shells, but the reward is not as great. Oh, sure, they taste the same, but it's just a whole lot more fulfilling to pop two nuts in you mouth at once.
As you reach the bottom of the bowl there are only these little single-nut shells left. Apparently, being smaller, they must slip through the cracks and fall to the bottom. By the time the bowl is nearly empty you really have to expend a lot more energy to get half as many mouth-fuls.
So I'm wondering - do those double-nutters force the little guys to the bottom so they can be first pick? Is there a peanut pecking order? How does this correlate to human life? I feel there's a lesson here somewhere.
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