Hello, my name is Marty Turner. You might know me from not knowing me unless we’ve met. Whatever our history together isn’t, I have a problem and I hope you have the solution. See, I had a huge family reunion on my calendar for a couple of months and as any Turner, or Turner adjacent person worth half their salt would tell you, I make a mean garbanzo bean salad.
Now, I have what some have called an “unnecessarily expansive family” and these folks love, and I mean, love my beans. So, I did what I always do when the family is planning on getting together, I logged onto Amazon.com and I spent two weeks pay on as many cans of those sweet garbanzos as Jeff Bozo would allow. Then, I went down to the basement where I house what some have called an “unnecessarily deep” vat to take inventory of the only other ingredient in the salad.
Mayo.
Now when I say “deep,” we’re not talking leagues here, but let’s just say that old David Y. Jones himself might have second thoughts before exploring its milky depths.
ANYWAY, the reunion got cancelled. So here I am, stuck with a house full of bean filled Amazon delivery boxes, a cancelled family function and a hole in my wallet the size of 2,020 cans of garbanzos. I’m not in too much of a tizzy over the beans though. I’m sure this open plea will find someone willing to ‘em off my hands. I’m mostly just a little bummed out as to why the Turner family reunion was cancelled. It was just what you’d think. The topic none of us can avoid no matter how much we just want it to go away. The reason we’re all afraid to leave our houses.
The common cold.
Yeah, that pesky common cold.
See, Aunt Tina is a summer-school sub and she got sent into the trenches on a day when one of her little ankle-biter student’s parents decided it would be ok to drop ‘em off at school while they were packing heat. I can’t blame ‘em, personally. I would’ve done the same thing with my kids if I weren’t sterile, but my personal chickpeas haven’t produced hummus in quite a while.
ANYWAY, Aunt Tina came home from school and spent the day loving and kissing her family as she does. Then, her kids Carl and Sampson went over to uncle Chet’s house to play with cousins Laura and Danny. So, now they were contaminated. That night, Chet’s wife, Tammi, went out to dinner with the sisters of the family who are still living in the immediate area. Now that’s Tammi, Tawnee, Tina, Jannette, Jen, Lu-Ann, Anna Marie, Joanna Marie, Hannah Marie, Marie Clare and Pat. Now, technically Pat’s not a Turner, but that’s a story for another time. Don’t wanna get side-tracked.
ANYWAY, now all of those girls were stricken with disease and, at the end of the night, went home to their respective houses and dropped a drippy-nosed A-Bomb onto the premises. After about a 4 day incubation period for the respective households the entire Turner family tree was bed ridden. That’s, of course, the parts of the tree that are still alive. Not the large amount of the family taken out by something called “COVID-19” earlier this year.
ANYWAY, I have to unload these beans. And you don’t want to miss out on an opportunity to buy some beautiful, second hand chickpeas from a man with the sniffles, do you? So, if you’re interested, just leave a clean $10 bill sticking out of the mailbox. I’ll find it and fill it to the brim with as many cans of these round legumes as I can squeeze in. Just leave the cans sit for a few days after I drop them off, will you? I know it’s going to be hard to resist the urge to dig into a fresh can of beans dropped off by someone you only know from not knowing, but you have to let the virus die off. I wouldn’t want you to fall victim to the same fate mine and countless other families world wide have fallen prey to this year. I just couldn’t rest at night knowing I caused another family to fall ill to a highly contagious virus resulting in large scale death, the cancellation of a beach vacation, a trip overseas, or – God forbid – a family function.
ANYWAY, that’ll be it from me. I’ll start dragging these boxes of garbanzos up and down every street in the neighborhood until I run out.
If you hear my cold-ridden body sniffing, put a $10 in the mailbox and it’s beans you might be gettin’!
Chris Laychak 