Some things are just too difficult to swallow

By means of a can of Del Monte cut green beans, I first learned people were starving in China.



“Eat your green beans," my father would say.

“I can’t, Dad. I can’t."

“There are people starving in China," he’d say.

Only on evenings when my mother served canned green beans did my father show any interest in foreign affairs. Otherwise, it was the sports page for him. On these canned-green-beans evenings, I was inflicted with a psyche-scarring moral equation, and I wished desperately to be on the opposite end of it. I would have opted to be starving with the Chinese ...

Under my father’s roof, if you didn’t clean your plate, you were told you couldn’t leave the dinner table. He was the constable of the picky eaters’ public stockade. My hands were splayed out on the dinner table. My head hovered over my plate. I was going nowhere, and neither was he.

Feet thumped overhead as my siblings took a final, feverish stab at outrunning the noose of nighttime. Downstairs it’d be just my father and me corralled under the cold interrogation light of the dinner table in a scene that could have easily been mistaken for a father and son engaging in quiet prayer and reflection. The dog was somewhere within the first ring of fading light keeping vigil on my behalf like a loved one outside a prison.

The dishwasher would be humming, turning everyone else’s dirty plates into clean slates. Mine would remain marked with the sinful, sorrowful, insurmountable earthwork of stubborn refusal. Together, we comprised a pitiful collection my father, me and this aimless mound of green beans that would refuse to keep their appointment with my stomach. I would try. I would place one in my mouth and attempt to chew, but my throat would contract. I’d gag, and the beans would take the hint.

My siblings would manage to make a final appearance in the kitchen to check up on things, a brief encore in a costume change, sliding in their stocking feet upon the linoleum. They had eaten their green beans. They would flaunt their freedom.

“Green beans make you strong, they’d shout."

“Go!" my father would tell them, and off they’d disappear into the enchanting shadows where canned-green-beans eaters could roam in soft flannel.

Meanwhile, our standoff continued, my father staring at me and me staring at my plate while people in China starved.


“Can’t we just send the green beans to the Chinese?"


Seemed a common sense solution.


I had never known extreme hunger, so I had my own notions of what life might be like for a backward Asian nation that was starving to death. Since my canned green beans were desperately needed elsewhere, I would imagine digging a hole beneath the table with the sugar spoon straight down until I reached China. I would have poked my head out of the dusty soil and given a holler. The villagers would have gathered. They would have been gentle and polite. Holding a lantern close, they would have helped me up and dusted me off. I would have presented them with my green beans, and they would have been totally psyched. We would have exchanged addresses. We would have stayed in touch.


Then I’d crawl back into my hole and reemerge under the dinner table, telepathically telling the dog not to blow my cover, and my father would still be there, but he’d be reading the sports page, unawares. I’d make a show of gulping hard and saying, "Phew," while triumphantly slamming my fork upon the table. He would peer out from behind the newspaper. He would be impressed. From here on out, I’d be his favorite.


Everyone wins!


The green beans never got eaten. Ninety minutes of a victual impasse, my gag reflexes remained at Defcon 1, their security measures strengthened, and my father gave up. I wouldn’t be allowed to have sweets for a week. My mother would pull me aside in the morning and promise she’d never serve canned green beans again, though she clearly had amnesia.


I now have a son who’s a picky eater. Following the advice of pediatricians who agree that applying pressure and punishment to children at mealtime is idiotic, we encourage him to try new foods, and he rarely does, but he won’t die of scurvy. When dinner is over, dinner is over. It’s declared a pleasant experience. The overhead light is switched off. The dog rototills the dusty floor for crumbs. We go upstairs. We lasso the boy in for the evening. No one has been emotionally scarred.


My, so much has changed since my green bean stand-offs.


I now have a better grasp of geography. Digging straight down from the dinner table would have landed me in the Indian Ocean just off the coast of western Australia.


I have been introduced to a wondrous variety of delicious green beans that aren’t grown in cans.


And China has since started outsourcing most of its starvation to the West.