green bean

Two Sundays ago, I took Bo to fulfill his childhood dream of going to Disneyland.

In the early morning, before heading over to the Happiest Place on Earth, I told him how the restaurants around Disneyland are overpriced with nasty food. I had a bad experience previously with a $14 plate of spaghetti that resembled a tomato noodle pudding.

We drove to Albertson's and bought a shopping cart of food for our knapsack: sandwich fixings, an entire roasted chicken, apples, bottled water. In the salad aisle, I picked up a bag of green beans.

"Can you eat green beans raw?" Bo said.

"Sure!" I said. "I eat them in the cafe at work all the time."

After we paid at the checkout line, the cashier told us Disneyland checks bags and does not allow external food to enter the theme park.

We took the food to our car, and ate the roasted chicken with our fingers in the Albertson's parking lot.

After driving to Disneyland, we decided to sneak in the green beans. Bo walked for fifteen minutes, from parking lot to park entrance, with the green beans tucked under his left arm, inside his outer shirt.



Once safely inside, we transferred the green beans and carried them by hand. We lovingly brought those green beans across AdventureLand and FrontierLand, through the Haunted Mansion and the Indiana Jones ride.

Four hours later, in line for "It's a Small World", I said that I wanted to eat the green beans.

"The bag will be harder to carry once it's open," said Bo. "We should wait until after the ride."

We stood in line for another five minutes, upon which I decided that NO, I cannot wait, I crave the green beans now. We opened the bag, and with great anticipation, each bit into a green bean.

We learned that green beans are not edible when raw.

With eyebrows wrinkled, Bo ran over to the trash can to spit out the raw remnants of green bean.

Upon return, he said, "We've already carried this thing for four hours. I'm not throwing it out now. I'm going to keep it the rest of the day, and then take it home and stir-fry it."

On our next ride, after being tossed about by the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, we opened the cloth purse-holder bag in front of the seat to find that our green beans escaped their bag. Cute green bean pieces were clumped in a heap.

A Disneyland employee dressed like a pageboy rushed us out of the ride, so we had to abandon them, our dear green beans.