Having recently overheard my neighbor’s offspring chuckling at the story of a peanut sitting on the railroad track, I have become, quite understandably, incensed with the little monsters’ lack of empathy. After all, how could anyone in their sound mind find it funny when someone gets crushed by a train? Especially when that someone is a peanut, and a walking peanut at that.
Wait. What? A walking peanut? Was it in fact Mr. Peanut, a.k.a. Bartholomew Richard Fitzgerald-Smythe, the debonair legume with a monocle in his right eye, a cane in his left hand, a top hat, and two tuxedo sleeves? (By the way, whatever happened to the rest of his coat? Was Yoko Ono somehow implicated in the partial disappearance of his wardrobe?)
By conducting an independent investigation into the peanut’s untimely demise, I was able to obtain answers to most, if not all, of the questions surrounding this incident. The results of my inquiry are complex, but undeniably thought-provoking:
First of all, since there could not possibly be more than one mobile legume in the entire history of the world, I was forced to conclude that the peanut in question was, indeed, the adorable Mr. Peanut. But why on earth was Bartholomew Richard sitting there? Did he not know how dangerous it is to loiter on train tracks?
Perhaps Mr. Fitzgerald-Smythe was spotted on the train track in the 1930s? Judging by his rakish outfit, Mr. Peanut worked as a snake-oil salesman or an escape artist. And so, in order to support himself, he might have had to travel by hopping on and off freight trains, as did two million other impoverished or unemployed Americans at that time. His tuxedo might then have frayed and eventually disintegrated from the countless nights spent under the open sky (thus vindicating Yoko Ono).
Being a migrant worker, Mr. Peanut must have been sitting on the railroad track while waiting for his next ride. Since his mind was no doubt foggy from hunger and exhaustion, he failed to realize the impending danger. His irregular diet might have contributed to his infamous heart flutter, a known symptom of hypoglycemia. Or perhaps Mr. Peanut was an adrenaline junky, thrilled about the upcoming challenge of jumping aboard a moving train?
Of course, it is also entirely possible that Bartholomew Richard Fitzgerald-Smythe’s flutter was due to a serious heart condition. While it is widely accepted that eating peanuts might lower a human’s chances of a heart attack, there is absolutely no scientific data about how an actual legume might be affected by peanut protein. Maybe Mr. Peanut was allergic to peanut butter?
There is another more disheartening interpretation of the event: Bartholomew Richard might have been planning to end his life. His ‘heart was all aflutter’ because he could feel the fast-approaching five-fifteen train reverberating in his buttocks. Sadly, these were not the good vibrations Brian Wilson would later sing about. The peanut chose to remain seated on the railroad track, despite the tremors in his heart and in his bottom, and even after he had heard the ‘toot-toot’. It is even more tragic since Mr. Peanut would have been a mere teenager back then (allegedly, he was born around 1916). So this was not a laughing matter, as some children seem to believe.
If the fatal accident took place in the 1940s rather than the 1930s, then Mr. Peanut might have been a war hero instead of a depressed legume. While serving in the military during World War II, he may have become aware of the Army’s meager field rations and, driven by patriotic zeal, resolved to sacrifice himself for his country and supply the American troops with the much needed, freshly-pressed, protein-rich peanut butter. While sitting on the railroad track somewhere deep in France or Germany, his heart might have been ‘all aflutter’ in anticipation of his heroic deed. This is a courageous act deserving of admiration rather than ridicule.
Interestingly enough, regardless of whether the incident took place in the 1930s or in the 1940s, the Internet insists that Mr. Peanut did not actually die then. Further research indicates that Mr. Peanut must have reconstituted himself from the resulting peanut butter, like many of the Hollywood aliens who always rise from the pools of slime left after their apparent annihilation. According to multiple sources, Mr. Peanut died again on 22 January 2020, at the ripe old age of 104. He passed away like a true hero, sacrificing himself and his Nutmobile to save an armadillo. No one knows whether Mr. Peanut experienced any heart flutters during that accident, but everyone agrees that, once again, he did not stay dead for long. After his funeral (which was attended by Mr. Clean and Kool-Aid Man), Bartholomew Richard Fitzgerald-Smythe came back as Baby Nut, immediately inquiring after his monocle, as if he were the fourteenth Dalai Lama reaching for his previous incarnation’s walking stick and hand drum.
Thus, it appears that, despite his multiple encounters with death, Mr. Peanut is alive and well. He is currently active on social-media platforms, and, in 2025, at the age of 109, he even became a movie star, appearing in Electric State on Netflix along with Millie Bobby Brown, Chris Pratt, and Woody Harrelson.
As it turns out, Bartholomew Richard Fitzgerald-Smythe is not a tragic figure after all, but an immortal creature, which is why I am forced to concede that not all children who laugh at ‘toot-toot – peanut butter!’ are psychopaths. Unlike me, they must know about Mr. Peanut’s superpowers. However, I remain convinced that further investigation into this matter is essential, because what normal human being giggles at the excruciating demise of Humpty-Dumpty, the three blind mice, and the rock-a-bye baby?
Originally from Ukraine, Yekatarina has been teaching writing and literature in the U.S. public school system since 1999. She is a writer of poetry, fiction and nonfiction, and her work has been published in Educational Leadership, NCTE’s English Journal and Montclair University Digital Commons. In 2017, one of her short stories was a semi-finalist in the Francine Ringold Award for New Writers and in 2024, another short story was published in The Penmen Review.