Jellybean conspiracy

“Do you really believe that Johnson's Baby Shampoo is tear free? People, just think about it. How could it not sting the eyes? It is a shampoo, after all.”

Silence.

“They told us that the shampoo doesn’t sting the eyes to fool us. To make us believe that our feelings are not real, so they could manipulate us! You, what's your name?”

“Timi.”

“How old are you, Timi?”

“Three and a half.”

“How many days is that?”

“Excuse me?”

“How many days is that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, multiply it by 365.”

“I don’t know how to multiply yet.”

“Pathetic.” Andrew spat on the ground. “That’s how they control us: we can’t do anything.”

“Oh, really? So how old are you, Andrew?” Mike asked.

“I’m FIVE AND A HALF! That is over seven million days!”

Silence reigned on the playground. Seven million days... This guy knew what he was talking about.

"You don't look the part," Mike said, gathering his courage.

"Exactly," Andrew’s sister added, encouraged by Mike's brave behavior. “And when Mom calls us, she always says ‘kids,’ so you are also a child.”

"Alice, don't you understand?! They manipulate you. They lump us together to lower my authority. To undermine my position. But why do you think they do this?”

Alice was silent, and so were the other children. Even Mike the Brave didn't know the answer.

“Because they are afraid of me!” Andrew shouted. “They are afraid of a revolution. They are afraid that we will finally take matters into our own hands and break out of this tyranny.”

“Yes, that's right!”

“Tyranny!”

“Revolution!”

“More freedom!”

“More jellies!”

“Hold on! Who said ‘jellies’?

Silence reigned once again on the playground.

“Who said ‘more jellies’? Do not be afraid, comrades, admit it, because you are onto something. Jelly beans are the key. We should fight for jelly beans. Listen up.” Andrew took on the tone of the host of Young Physicist. “How many jellies can you eat a day? Two, three? A handful, if it's Sunday? Where do you think it comes from?”

Glances were exchanged quickly at the playground, but ideas were lacking.

“Because jelly beans make you grow!” Andrew said it as if he had just discovered a new element. “Think about it. We eat a few jellies a day, and yet we're still shorter than the stroller, right? But what about adults? A few days ago, I saw my mother eat a whole bag of jellies in one evening. Now remember how tall she is. Do you understand now? They limit our access to jellies so that we never grow up. To keep us small and sweet and to control us.”

“Yeah, but I've grown almost a head since last year," Mike said, and received an admiring glance from Alice.

God, how brave he is, she thought.

“Right, but I bet there have been occasions over the last year when you ate a lot more jelly beans than they let you, right?”

“Oh, I, well, maybe…”

“Wasn't there a situation”—Andrew continued the interrogation—“that your mom told you ‘it's the last one,’ but you still ate a few more?”

“Well, indeed there were such situations.” Mike blushed.

“You see? It all makes sense. You ate more jelly beans than they let you, and you grew taller. Each of us has grown a bit recently, and I bet we've all eaten more jelly beans than we were allowed to, right? And now think”—Andrew paused dramatically—“how tall we would be if we ate as many jelly beans every day as they do.”

This time the whole playground was in turmoil. Caps fell to the ground, buckets began to fly in the air, someone even knocked a bike over. People have opened their eyes.

“I have a confession to make," Andrew said calmly, gesturing for the crowd to calm down. “I was not always so smart, but yesterday evening I decided to take matters into my own hands. After my mother prepared her jellies on the couch and went to the kitchen to get some tea, I grabbed the bag and put it in my toy basket. Then, as if nothing had happened, I sat down and played quietly with a toy car. When she came back and started looking for the jelly beans, I asked her with a poker face what she was looking for. She said ‘jellies,’ and I said I hadn’t seen them.” Andrew tapped his temple. “Then my mother went to the kitchen once again, took another bag of jellies and she started watching TV. Can you guess what I did then?”

“You made a beeline for the jelly beans?”

“No, you fools! That's what you would have done, and it is precisely because of such childish behavior that they keep us in their grip. But I”—Andrew froze with his finger raised in the air—“have nerves of steel, my friends. I waited. I sat next to my mother and I slowly started eating her jellies, thus avoiding all suspicion. I kept my cool.”

The playground fell silent, and Andrew did not continue until the tension became unbearable.

“This morning, just before leaving for the playground, when my mother went to the bathroom to touch her face with a crayon, I saw my chance. I rushed to the living room, tore open a bag of jellies and I ate them all at once. ALL OF THEM! And then it dawned on me. Only then did I understand what is really going on here.

“You had a whole bag of jelly beans and you didn't share it with me!?” Alice was outraged.

Andrew blinked and shook his head in disbelief.

“Ali, don't you understand? I did it for you. Do you want to spend the rest of your life playing in the sand? Building sandcastles? Chasing the ball like some kind of monkey in the zoo?”

“But I like building sandcastles.”

“Pathetic.” Andrew shook his head. “When you are my age you will understand, but let's hope that by then I will have saved us all.”

“What about chocolate?” Someone asked from the crowd.

“Same story.”

“And chips?”

“As well.”

“And coke?”

“Coke, my dear friends,"—Andrew took another dramatic pause—"is the potion of growth! You know how tall my dad is, right? Then listen. As soon as my father gets home, he pours himself a full glass of coke and almost drinks it down in one go. Then he pours a second and a third one, and he drinks that coke until he is completely exhausted and he falls asleep. Every day. I’m not allowed to even smell this coke, they are very careful about it. One day, there was no coke at home, and you couldn’t possibly imagine the fuss it created. Dad was furious. He said that Mom doesn’t understand anything, and that she just sits at home eating jelly beans all day long and has no idea what work is or what stress he is under. When I asked what happened, he looked at me pitifully and said that I was too small to understand. Can you imagine? ‘Too small!’ I felt humiliated, but Dad just ran to the store and he calmed down only after having drunk three glasses. It was only then that I realized that my dad was just scared that he would shrink. Mom has jelly beans that keep her tall, and Dad has coke.”

* * *

“It seems that my dad must be more and more afraid that he will shrink, because he recently started drinking coke even on weekends, just after breakfast. Mom shakes her head, but according to Dad, she just doesn't understand. My dad said that once you are so high, the pressure becomes unbearable.”

* * *

“Comrades! Day by day I become more and more convinced that my theory is right. Yesterday I did the thing with hiding the whole pack of jellies again, but this morning my mom caught me eating them and we started arguing. She told me to give the pack back immediately, and I said that I hated her and that I HAD to eat those jellies, and that she didn't understand me at all, and she told me to stop behaving like that, because I will be like my father. Do you remember how tall he is? Everything is confirmed.

* * *

“I think that my mom is very afraid of being shorter than my dad, because the more coke he drinks, the more jellies she eats. And when she runs out of jelly beans, she eats ice cream, which of course she won’t give me, and when ice cream runs out, she even eats dark chocolate. I guess it all works, because Dad said that Mom just keeps growing bigger and bigger.”

* * *

“You know what? My dad must be the tallest man in the world right now. I am so proud of him! We were at grandma's for a week and my dad must have drunk an entire six-pack of coke during that time, because when we got home, my mom said that Dad would live somewhere else for a while, because due to all that drinking, there is no space for him here anymore.”

END