Velcro Beans
I found some pictures my sister scanned and posted on the internet. I’m organizing photos to frame and hang on the wall, and want more of these to look at every day.
Also, seeing all of the happy pictures from the 70s at Sarah’s service just made me long to look at my own more.
While we visited my parents last Saturday, they offered up bucketfuls of produce, but we still had to pick our own asparagus and green beans. Ty started at one end and I started at the other. He made some sort of mention about being a good bean picker, and that I should try not to miss any beans. I told him I had to come over and watch his technique because mine was rusty.
As I placed my hand on his back, I engaged him in an old family tradition. Surreptitiously placing a green bean leaf on his back, I pretended to observe and learn from his technique. At that moment, my mother laughed, “I remember when the kids were little and would go out to pick beans.” She was about to tell the rest of the story about how we would try to tag each other with the leaves without the person being tagged knowing.
I bolted up from the patch, and placed a hushing finger to my lips. She walked around behind Tyrone and looked at his back and just started laughing and laughing and laughing.
Ty unknowingly wore the leaf all night, even to the horse track. I just told him about the leaf last night, and he says he found it. In running a load of clothes 5 minutes ago, I found him to be incorrect. The leaf was still stuck to his shirt! So here is the warning: if the leaf is still fresh, it comes off in one piece. If the leaf is a week old, it will crumble in to hundreds of pieces and litter your laundry. The joke is on me.
In this picture the joke was on Jen, but she was in on the joke: