Why Beanbags Matter
“You can’t have one of those. They’ll break open and all the stuff will come out and get all over everything.”
That’s what my mom always said to me when I was a kid and wanted a beanbag chair. This was a long time ago. My mom’s been dead since 2006, so she has no say in the matter these days.
She was wrong, too. I had a couple beanbag chairs. One was orange and the other one was blue and when the orange one finally did give out, it wasn’t sudden or dramatic. It was just kind of what was expected. It’s not like it was a fine piece of wooden furniture handed down from 1776 to present day. It was a beanbag chair. They’ll eventually break.
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I never had a Toss Across game, either. The neighbor girl across the street from me had one and I loved playing it. I often asked for one, but I don’t know why I never got it. I don’t think it was due to the tossable beanbags and the potential for them to break. You could throw those things hella hard and really do some damage, but not to the bags themselves. I made the point of buying my own son a Toss Across game a few years back. He didn’t seem as enthralled with it as I once was, but that’s OK.
I don’t know why mom was so worried, anyway. It’s not like there’s real beans in those bags. I guess if you had a homemade cornhole game there would be beans in the bags. But, no, that’s incorrect. There would be corn in a cornhole bag. Supposedly. I bet a beanbag would work just as well.
Mom did once throw a carrot at me. We had gotten into some sort of argument and she was getting ready prepping dinner and I must have pissed her off quite well as the next thing I know there’s a carrot headed toward my dome. Shit got real. Sort of like the time she tossed a cup of 7 Up at me. Now, my mom was a saint. But sometimes she could be prodded into throwing food items towards you corporeal being.
She once told me about a time before I was born when my dad was mad about something. They were having spaghetti for dinner that night and he took his plate of pasta and chucked it at one of the walls and it slowly slid down, leaving a snail trail of sauce behind it. I guess I got that from my dad, because I’ve tossed a few things in my lifetime as well. It always seems sensible in the heat of the moment when you’re doing it. Hulking out can be therapeutic to a degree. But then you often just wind up making a mess, or completely trashing something of yours that you really like just to spite yourself in a dramatic moment that adds up to nothing but a ridiculous instant pity party. Still, Hulk Smash (TM) and all.
Anyway, beanbags are peaceful things, be they ones you use as furniture or ones you toss in a game. Bags of beans are also handy, I imagine. Hauling big burlap bags of beans off the steamboats, up and down the ramp, wearing overalls, a dirty buttoned shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow and one of those knit hats with the bill that Members Only would monopolize in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Do that work. Work the bean. Industry is success.
