Magic and Beans

I've always felt bad for Jack.  Here's a kid in a one parent home out working when he should have been in school.  Dad's out of the picture.  Probably found a new Mrs. Jack's Dad (and a new Jack too).  And what's up with Jack's Mom?  Why is Jack out working?  If the cow is the difference between living and dying, shouldn't it be Jack's Mom's job to take care of it while Jack stays home and stirs the 'er bean soup?

Okay, obviously Jack's parents violated the parent/child contract.  Which is how poor Jack winds up charged with selling the cow and bringing Mom the cash.  Don't you find that suspicious?  I do.  What was Jack's Mom going to do with the money?  Buy drugs?  Gamble?  Surf eBay?

It's no wonder Jack turns to a life of crime.  Don't even try to sell me the bean story.  First of all Jack didn't the trade the cow for beans.  He was probably waylaid by his Mom's bookie who took the cow as payment.  If any beans changed hands at all it was probably because the bookie gave Jack 5 beans to represent the number of days his Mom had left before the cow would be pushing up daisies.  It certainly makes more sense than Jack, a wily under nourished streetwise kid, being taken in by some pervert who would steal a kid's last cow.

So we're agreed, right?  Beans or no beans, the beanstalk is just a metaphor for Jack's fall from moral grace.  Instead of working hard to learn an honest trade, Jack starts robbing houses.  Just little things at first...apples from the orchard, a bike left in the yard, a magic chicken who can recite Hamlet's soliloquy....but then one day, Jack gets bold.  He crosses the line from petty theft to breaking and entering.  

He is so clever, that Jack.  Now, I am no longer feeling that sorry for him.  There are lines that should not be crossed.  And breaking into people's homes is one of them.  Enter the giant's wife.  Let's call her Drusilla.  Dru is bored.  Her husband, the local crime boss, isn't home all that much.  She's got no friends and no one to talk to except the maid whom she suspects is sleeping with her husband.  If she had proof, she'd...what?  Divorce him?  I don't think so.  One word.  Prenup.  So when she walks into the bedroom and finds our little sneak thief jack rifling through the drawers, does she yell?  Does she call 911?  Does she even run?  Nope.  She smiles, licks her lips and crooks her finger.  

An hour or so later, Dru's hard working crime boss of a husband comes home.  The second he enters he is suspicious.  Why?  In the story he smells Jack.  Right.  More likely he found his wife in bed in the middle of the afternoon for no good reason and smelled Jack alright.  

Jack escapes of course.  And with some cash to boot.  This is way better than lifting skateboards rich kids can't bother to put in the garage.  So what does Jack do next?  Why he goes right back there.  He and Dru have lots more fun and this time Jack pinches some credit cards before exiting stage bedroom window.  

Third time's a charm though.  This time, it isn't Dru's husband who catches our lovebirds and threatens to spill the -er beans.  It's the maid.  Remember the maid?  Yep.  Thursday's her day off so Jack and Dru spill out of the bedroom and on to the living room bear rug, the dining table, the kitchen floor.  That's about where the maid finds them.  She's earning her own little bit of cash.  All she needs is one good photo and wife number 3 is out the door just in time for maid number 6 to become wife number 4.  If only she had turned off the auto flash, she might have gotten clean away.  But she didn't so she didn't.  Jack caught her and, in the way of 'if it can go wrong, it will go wrong', he barely had her tied up when the big man came home.  

Jack ran for the kitchen door but it was a bit tricky with a struggling maid and no shoes.  Plus the bitch kept shrieking and shrieking.  The giant crashed through the kitchen door wagging a big gun.  Jack threw the maid in his general direction just in time for her to catch a bullet.  Jack ran out the back door and around the side, tripping over the woodpile, scrabbling to regain his feet.  He was truly frantic.  What was he going to do!  He had bare moments before he got caught and he knew what would happen if he got caught.  If the giant had smelled him, he could feel the hot stink of the giant rolling out to fill the world.  This time it was going to be bad, real bad.  His hand touched something smooth, straight, wooden.  An axe.

Right.  Wrong.  Rich.  Poor.  Choices made and fates met.  And in the lie we read as children it was all because of the magic in the beans.  Sure.