Many years ago, when I was about ten or eleven, my mom told a story about a former co-worker of hers at the grocery store where she worked when I was born.

This woman and her husband liked to lick boysenberry jam off one another's naked bodies. They bought boysenberry jam expressly for this purpose, and used it for nothing else. Then one day, the husband's mom came to visit. In the morning, the woman came out of her bedroom to find the mother-in-law sitting on the couch eating toast slathered with--what else?--boysenberry jam.

When my mom told this story, it got quite a reaction, though all these years later, I'm not sure why. In fact, it seemed my mother buried her lead when she followed up the story with "And then there was another co-worker whose husband liked to have her poop on his chest." How is that an afterthought?

I find it doubtful the subjects of the tale were scraping the excess jam off their naked flesh and returning it to the jar. I'm all for frugality, but that seems more trouble than it's worth. I mean, a jar of boysenberry jam in the early-to-mid-70's probably cost about 40 cents.

I suppose it's possible the husband was using his penis to extract the jam from the jar, but that too seems dubious. I suppose it's possible they used their fingers to take the jam from the jar and then reinserted the same fingers into the jar after they'd been touching various unsanitary places.

Regardless, the point of this is that to this day whenever I make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at someone's house, I can't help but wonder whether I'm using the "lick off the naked body jelly."