Chapter Nineteen
Well I can tell you, and believe me, because I have tried: generating a properly functioning online quiz is no simple undertaking. There is math involved if you want to do it right, and there were times when Peter sorely wished he had befriended an actuary or a calculus teacher during the process.
The first fifty-two times Peter took his own quiz, he was informed that he was a Happy Peanut every time.
“Son-of-a-fucking-bitch!”
Before taking the quiz for a fifty-third time though, he wrote an apology letter to Allison, the young blogger who liked to write about hair clips.
For the first time in Peter’s life, he had admitted he was wrong.
He almost cried writing that sincerest of apologies.
Peter’s next step in growing was for him to discover, and then to accept, just how easy it truly can be for everyone to be Ashley Olsen.
Then he stopped and put his thinking cap back on because he was still kind of a prick in general and he really wanted to get back to work.
‘There has got to be some way to figure this out,’ he thought to himself.
He fetched another piece of scrap paper.
‘There are twelve questions. Each has either: two, three or four possible choices, but, damn it!
In the end, there can be so many friggin’ combinations it could drive a person mad.’
This is when the question of probability entered the picture.
‘I’ve got to set this up so there is an equal chance of getting any one of the eight different answers. Not everyone can be the Happy Peanut.’
He was determined.
It took him four days to figure it out.
Why so long?
It took him that long because he decided to figure it all out on his own instead of using the law of probability to assist him because he was still a stubborn ass and refused to ask for help.
Working it all out, he was eventually able to answer the questions differently and attain a different result almost every time.
Once or twice he was the Confident Peanut. More often than not he was the Silly Peanut, but he’d set it up that way because he wanted more people to be the Silly Peanut because he believed in his heart that if a person was to be told that they are a Silly Peanut, they would somehow feel happier inside.
He thought, ‘Being the Silly Peanut will bring about more smiles, even more so than being the Super Peanut or the Confident Peanut, but even still, not everyone should be a Silly Peanut all the time.
That would appear unbecoming of anyone.
‘If people start their day with one of my quizzes, I can guarantee they will begin each day with a smile, maybe even a laugh. Then they will share my quizzes, and like some contagious disease, people will become happier while I am alive.”
Why was he even thinking such things?
Why did he even care?
He began to feel like the Grinch on that day in the snow when his heart grew three sizes, having started off two sizes too small, like Peter’s penis.
But what Peter failed to realize, was that his quizzes, (eventually all seven hundred of them) along with many interesting and beloved examples of his paintings, would continue to affect people for thousands of years to come.