A Piece of Green Bean

My grandma believes that Capri Suns can cure diabetes and that red Gatorade will give you cancer.

She loves anything with sugar in it. Dinner will hardly be touched, but she’ll always ask what’s for desert. For a few days she didn’t eat anything but Cracker Jacks.

Seriously lacking vegetables this week, we included some roasted green beans with our dinner tonight, and we told her that she had to eat two of them in order to get desert.

“Well, what’s for desert?”

“Chocolate chip cookies. Fresh from the oven.”

Her expression was pained. She wanted those cookies, but 3 cherry tomatoes, a small potato and two green beans was a big request. She said, “We’ll see.”

By the end of the meal we were chatting and joking. There was one half of a shriveled green bean left in front of her. I watched her as she smoothly slid it into her napkin, folded it neatly in half and patted the corners of her mouth. She put it down, convinced that she had fooled us all.

I don’t know how many grandchildren have chanted “EAT IT” at their poor grandmother, but here we were. Not only did we call her out on her plot, but we also told her she would not be eating any cookies until she ate that 1.5 inch green bean.

“But it’s all smushed!”

“Grandma, you’re the one who smashed it!”

We went back and forth for a while, but she was unmovable.

So, we compromised.

My mother hand delivered a cookie to my Grandmother. She even let her pick which one she wanted. We munched and crunched while we watched Mrs. Doubtfire and talked about Robin Williams. She ate her second cookie, thinking that she had won.

“Did you enjoy your green bean, mother?”

“What are you talking about?”

That last little sliver of green bean had been torn apart and inserted into the cookie that my mother guided my grandma into choosing. Not only did she get her desert, but she ate her green bean too.

She was disgusted with us. She told us that we’ll be sorry, because she’s never going to eat a green bean again! We kept trying to convince her that it wasn’t so bad. Using the same logic you might use with a niece or nephew, Seth told her “But Grandma, green beans are filled with chocolate.”

“No they’re not!”

“Then what are they filled with?”

“Grass!”