Memories of a Lima Bean

I was at the book store and this lady asked me to help her find a particular cookbook. I took her to that section of the store and we began to talk about favorite foods.

"I love lima beans." she told me. "I would rather eat lima beans than anything else in the world."

I just gawked at her. Lima beans. Lima beans???

"Lima beans over steak?" I asked.

"Oh yes!"

"Lobster?"

"Uh huh!"

"Chocolate cake? Ice cream?"

"Yep. Over any of those things. I'll eat them any way they are fixed. I love lima beans!"

I thought this was a bit strange. If you put a lima bean in front of me next to a piece of chocolate cake, or a steak, or a few crab legs, I would knock the bean to the floor in my rush to devour the other stuff. But I figure, to each their own, and left this lady to pick out her cookbook.

I began to think back on my own first experience with lima beans. I must have been about four or five years old. My mother put one solitary bean on my plate and told me I had to try it. Worse yet, I could not leave the table until it was gone.

I looked at that ugly bean. There was no way I was going to put that pukey thing in my mouth. So I did what any self respecting pre-schooler would do; I squished it up into my nose.

My mother did not see me do this but what she did see was the end of a mashed Lima bean sticking out of my nostril. She made me blow it back out into a napkin and I got sent to my room.

She never forced me to try any other food again, and to this day, you can't get me near a lima bean without my stomach turning.