I doubt you’d have heard of these two rival teams, but not to worry: I’ll tell you all you need to know. Andrew is captain of the Beans. The Beans are a football team, and their arch rivals are the Birds. Every Thursday afternoon was P.E. day at their boarding school in Bedford, England. The boys went to the same school, often sharing the same classroom, and yet their head teacher had spent the week in an apoplectic state: “What is this nonsense about the Beans and the Birds at war with one another?! Our students are here to learn to behave like men, not yobbos! I want a detailed report from the classroom supervisors and P.E. teachers about this Bean-Bird kerfuffle!” These were the words with which Headmaster Lawson addressed his staffroom. The previous night, Jack – captain of the Birds – had been set upon. The Beans had come to his dormitory during the night and tipped his mattress up against the wall. The news had spread through the Bedford school like wildfire; an enquiry had even been launched.
Of course, every war has its origins; all hatred has its cause, and every cause has its effects. “I want the names of all troublemakers!” Mr. Lawson was adamant. So how had this war even started? One Thursday after P.E., after the two teams had played their match, Andrew came back from the showers to find that all the buttons had been removed from his shirt. It was no accident; someone had come along snipped off every last one of them. He’d had to walk through the school with his shirt open, enduring the mocking of his fellow students. Who could be responsible for this humiliation? Was it revenge for something? Andrew had spent a week trying to figure out who had stolen his shirt buttons. Andrew knew that sportsmanship was in short supply when you played against the Birds. He decided to take revenge – and it could only have been the Birds. Still, retribution would be difficult to achieve on the pitch – Andrew played in defence, and never got the chance to score goals against his rivals. So how could he get revenge? Cut hole in the other captain’s trousers? No, he had a better idea: he would find a way to get into the Birds’ changing room and pull out all the laces from their shoes. The best time to act was when the other team was on the pitch. That was it! One day, when the Birds were out on the training pitch, Andrew had cleverly managed to sneak into their changing room and remove their shoelaces. The captain of the Beans had his revenge, and so the great enmity of Beans versus Birds had begun.
This afternoon, Andrew and Jack, the respective captains, had decided to meet beneath a tree to negotiate peace terms. For Andrew a deal was out of the question; he would never forget the humiliation of his unkempt shirt. Jack, though, was eager to make peace.
“We can’t keep fighting over buttons! Our thing is about football!” cried Jack.
“Until I find out who did it, I’ll keep telling my team to wreak vengeance.”
“I did it. But only because you copied by Latin homework. It wasn’t fair, and you didn’t learn anything!” Jack explained.
“Are you joking? All this over some blasted Latin?” Andrew sputtered.
“If I’m not top of the class, my father won’t let me co cycling on Sundays, and he makes me study all day long instead,” Jack complained.
“Poor chap. Can’t be much fun studying Latin on Sunday after church.”
“Especially when the mass is already in Latin...I swear, I’m going to start talking like a Roman legionary if this goes on. You swear you won’t copy again?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die,” promised Andrew, spitting in the dirt as he did so.
Alan Alfredo Geday