Because whether it’s a bean smear inside of a tortilla or a meaty one in the middle of the road, it makes no difference in the end.
Beans.
Not a bird, not a season, nor a flower, nor God so help me a fruit. I was named after that which swells the belly and stinks up a room, the slop in a can, the smear of brown paste inside of a tortilla is my namesake.
And what kind of destiny do parents envision when naming their kid Beans? Beans the future president of the United States? Beans the football hero? Beans the doctor performing open-heart surgery? Beans the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize?
Surely not Beans, the kid who gets food thrown at them on the bus. Not Beans who receives a cacophony of fart sounds whenever they enter a classroom. And not Beans whose teachers wince when attendance is called on the first day of school—and without a middle name or an alias—they're left to swallow the sour reality that I am nothing more than Beans.
I’ll tell you what other destiny it creates. Beans grows into the adult who lives their entire life without eating a bowl of chili and makes a point to never look both ways before crossing a street. Because whether it’s a bean smear inside of a tortilla or a meaty one in the middle of the road, it makes no difference in the end.
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