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My son has eaten thousands of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. He takes two or three to school in his bag lunch. He also snacks on them when there is no cereal or popcorn left in the house. Of the thousands of PBJ's consumed by my child, I can count on one hand the number of times he has actually made such a sandwich.

I always considered the peanut butter and jelly sandwich a relatively simple dish to prepare in comparison to a cold cut sub or chicken Alfredo. For my teenager, the difficulty level must be daunting. He prefers to baby-sit his younger brother for several hours in exchange for me making him a sandwich rather than spread two ingredients on a couple of pieces of bread and stick them together.

Based on the PBJ products that have been marketed in my lifetime, my PBJ-loving son is not the only person on the planet who finds it challenging to put together the delicacy. Over the years, there have been a variety of products introduced to simplify the process of assembling peanut butter and jelly between two slices of bread.

For example, one can purchase a jar that contains alternating stripes of both peanut butter and jelly. This product cuts down on the number of spreading utensils it takes to create the sandwich.

I can see the value in peanut butter and jelly offered together in one jar. For those taking short cuts using the same utensil anyway, this product eliminates the YUCK factor created when bits of peanut butter are found floating in the jelly or globs of jelly are stuck in the peanut butter. If both products are already together, there are no surprises upon opening the jar.

There are also pre-made PBJ sandwiches available in the freezer section of the grocery store. These pre-made sandwiches with no crusts need only some time to thaw. Eliminating the need to make the sandwich altogether, parents can pop a frozen PBJ into a lunch bag in the morning and the child can eat a cold, crust-less PBJ come lunch break.

The frozen product doesn't really appeal to the teenager who would require four or five in his lunch just to make a dent in his hunger. What teen has time to wait for thawing when the evening PBJ craving hits? Teens are also too impatient to operate the microwave in such a manner that will prevent the sandwich from becoming hard, overly chewy and otherwise inedible.

I've never had much luck preparing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and freezing them for the week ahead. Once my homemade PBJ's thaw, the jelly immediately soaks through the bread and the sandwich loses its firmness and form. What my child ended up with at school was a blob resembling something already digested and a credit balance on his cafeteria account.

The powers that be still believe in the marketability of the simplified PBJ. This is evident in a new product, coming soon to a store near you. The latest breakthrough in PBJ technology is the peanut butter slice. Soon, you will be able to purchase individually wrapped slices of peanut butter.

Based on the picture, the product resembles individually wrapped cheese slices. Basically, the object is to peel off the plastic wrapper and lay it on a slice of bread. No jar, no utensil, no mess -- until you add the jelly, of course.

This new product will surely make adding peanut butter to the sandwich easier, but it doesn't do much for adding jelly other than keeping blobs of peanut butter from invading the jelly jar. A spreading utensil is still required for the jelly, so there is still potential for a sticky mess.

While my son might make a sandwich or two to try out the new peanut butter slices, it will take more than that to transform him into an independent PBJ maker. But the slices do offer hope for the future.

With the advent of individually wrapped peanut butter slices, can jelly slices be far behind? The jelly slice concept is not all that far removed from the already well received rolled up fruit snacks. With a tweak of the recipe and a new marketing plan, individually wrapped slices of jelly could be available before the next decade.

Meanwhile, it wouldn't surprise me if teenagers everywhere take the leap and begin making peanut butter and rolled fruit snack sandwiches as soon as the peanut butter slices hit the shelves.

The sandwich might be a bit chewy, but at least assembly will be quick and easy. For a teenager with a tight schedule packed with texting, creating YouTube clips, downloading MP3's and hanging at the skate boarding park, you can never shave too much time off the assembly of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Micki Bare is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau and the Courier-Tribune in Asheboro, N.C., and author of the book, "Relative Expressions." She lives in Asheboro with her husband and three children. Her e-mail address is mickibare@inspiredscribe.com.