1410 Courtesy Peanuts

The fax has been an amazingly persistent piece of technology. Sure, it has a few drawbacks, but what technology doesn’t? You need an open phone line on both ends. And a similar machine. And there’s that annoying series of sounds that always belch from the machines.
Like some eighties arcade video game gone berserk. Pacman eats Space Invaders.
And you know how you sometimes get a fax and it’s multiple pages, but you’re not sure you’ve received all of the pages? Thank goodness some people are courteous enough to send a fax cover sheet that says something like, “This fax has 3 pages.” Which can sometimes lead to a further mystery, unless the cover sheet says, “This fax has three pages including this one.”
There’s another technology that suffers from drawbacks as well. Packing Peanuts. There was a time when they were hailed from all the shipping lanes of power. “Everybody loves packing peanuts!” they would cry out, “Packing peanuts for everyone.”
It wasn’t long before folks realized that packing peanuts could have problems. Like with static electricity. Like albino jumping beans, they’d pop out of the box, and the further you’d chase ‘em the further they’d fly away.
And at Christmas time, when many people send packages, it was worse. Dry winter air is static electricity city.
So you dig things out of boxes gingerly. And try to leave the peanuts as undisturbed as possible. Otherwise it’s peanuts on your sleeves, peanuts on the floor, peanuts on the reindeer on your wool sweater, peanuts stuck to your polar fleece sweatpants.
I have a suggestion. It’ll help you dig no further. Save the effort. And leave the peanuts in the box.
A simply courtesy. A packing peanuts cover sheet:
“This box contains 3 gifts...4 including this note.”
America, ya gotta love it.