Aug 1, 2016 3 min read

My oldest child is a voracious reader, and read more books in her life than I would estimate I have in my own. One of her favorite series is “Harry Potter,” and she has both read the books and seen the movies innumerable times.

In one of the movies, the character Dumbledore eats a jelly bean of sorts, a Bertie Botts Every Flavour Bean. Bertie Botts’ beans are famous because they represent a range of flavors. Dumbledore chews briefly before remarking the bean he chose was earwax flavored. He continues to chew as he laments that, the last time he ate a Bertie Botts bean, it was flavored like vomit.

Gross.

I don’t mean that hypothetically. A vomit-flavored bean would be gross. I mean, they are actually gross. Yes, I have literally eaten a vomit-flavored jelly bean. You see, some candy company here in present-day America ran with the “every flavored bean” idea and created a game from them.

You can actually purchase a game to play with friends, where you each choose a similarly colored bean to eat simultaneously. The beans of each color look the same and smell the same, but are deceivingly different. One may be flavored like blueberries and the other like toothpaste. (That makes it seem like a mild game, eh?) Like a fool, I recently agreed to play with my sister. OK, in the spirit of truth, I must confess she didn’t want to play, and I talked her into it.

In the version we played, we agreed to sample 10 jelly beans. On a count of three, we each popped a bean from the same pile into our mouths. We started with what we determined would be the worst of the bad beans. Our hope was for peach, but we both got vomit.

Next was either black licorice or skunk spray. Neither one would have made my list for “good flavors,” but I’m now certain skunk is worse. My sister agrees.

After that came rotten eggs or buttered popcorn, baby wipes or coconut, dog food or chocolate pudding, boogers or pear, grass clippings or lime, moldy cheese or caramel corn and dirty socks or tutti frutti. From the list of acceptable flavors, I can tell you what tutti frutti tastes like, and my sister can tell you about lime.

Yes, you understood that correctly. Out of all of the flavors, we each only enjoyed one bean. The remaining rounds, we chewed approximately four times before realizing our suffering and spitting out the bean. But spitting out the candy did little to remove the actual flavor.

We gagged, spit, rinsed our mouths, scratched our tongues – and, of course, yelled, cursed a little and laughed a lot. Still, skunk spray is difficult to get out of your teeth. Vomit comes back on you for a while. And stinky sock can fill a whole room, much like its larger counterpart.

The spectators for the game found the entire thing to be enjoyable (except, perhaps, for the part where I breathed on them – I mean, share and share alike, right?), in some cases crying from laughing so hard at our misery.

I would never play this game again, nor would I recommend it to anyone with any kind of weak disposition. But I imagine from the others’ reactions, I would watch someone else’s round with immense enjoyment.

Laura Zoeller can be reached at zoeller5@verizon.net.