In the world with 4 walls, over 100 different lanes, and 4,000 items, it's hard to know where you could be. It's hard to keep track of who comes in and who walks out. What gets paid for and what doesn’t. It holds everything you could ever want like hair products, to a new laptop, to makeup, and dog food. Maybe even a new tree for your living room. You can buy steak for your husband to barbeque for dinner tonight. You can also buy canned goods for easy- to make meals. Want to make a salad? Get some lettuce! Just kidding, don’t eat us. But, I’ll tell you about our journey.

You might know this from a movie called “Sausage Party”, the best movie that visually shows you what us foods go through. It’s really traumatizing, and you humans just sit there and savor all the flavor. Do we really taste so good that you burn us and cover us with seasoning? Apparently so, but, being a portion of food is hard. I enjoyed the fresh air hanging from a plant, seeing birds fly overhead. Hearing the wind whistling between the grass blades. Watching the clouds build up in the distance, feeling the rain pour down.

It took me a month to grow up to be a big strong bean. Now I sit on a shelf with about 60 different kinds of beans and salsa. Chips are across the aisle from us. We watch bags of chips get taken every second. Little humans beg the parents to get the potato chips or Tostitos with a jar of Queso, which sits underneath the shelf. Everyone gets scared when they reach in our direction. Who are they going for? Will they put us back down or walk away with us? You’ll never know until you get chosen to go home with a cart full of your food friends and get thrown around by tiny humans.

All I remember is is watching everyone’s eyes get big as I got picked up and set into a cold car with other food. Then I heard the loud crinkling of a bag of chips. I was in a panic the whole ride and everyone in the chip bag chattering away. They had no idea what was going to happen to them. I fell asleep when the human found her friend and talked for a good 10 minutes. My tiny heart was beating so fast and I never felt more nervous in my entire life! I figured the shopping was over when the squeaking and shaking stopped and a loud BEEP… BEEP… BEEP.. and I was in another bag. It was another process of sitting and waiting until we were in the car on the way home.

Bags got thrown around on a hard surface and a lot of things spilled everywhere. This is when I fell out. I shot out of the opening like a nerf gun bullet across the room. A single bean on the dirty, dusty floor. Food went everywhere like an explosion. Even the chips popped open. I ran for my life for the pantry. I didn’t think a bean could run, I didn’t even know I would be free. I ran for the table first, watched everyone suffer on the ground. I was so far from my family and friends and there was no way I could make it back to them. I just had to let them go…

I was a soldier now, on my own and I had to save myself and anyone else that had fallen. This is when I met Chip, one of the potato chips that exploded out of the bag next to mine. We ran farther into the pantry and waited. My bean family were put on the bottom shelf while Chip was on the third shelf which looked like it was 40 miles away. We talked about what we should do and then teamed up together and we found some string and we tied it around one of the pillars that supported the shelves. We both climbed up past the beans, they didn’t look too good anymore. Now, it was just a journey to get to the top of the shelf, but it felt like climbing Mt. Everest. We stopped at the second shelf to refresh with some water. It took me and Chip to get the cap off and we dipped inside the bottle. It was so cold. I haven't had water since I was picked when I was at the farm. We were there for a few minutes until we continued our journey upwards.

I was walking on the edge of the shelf when I slipped and fell. My heart stopped and I shrieked so loud I thought that a human could hear me. I was hanging on for dear life and I thought it was going to be the end of me and I was going to abandon Chip. He then reached down and grabbed me and pulled me up. Chip is so thin I thought he was going to break in half. When I got back on my feet we sat on the edge and looked over all the shelves across from us. There was so much food, some of them I recognized from when I sat in the market and some I didn’t even know who they were.

We turned around and looked at the packages of food behind us. It was my bean friends, but they were different. I walked up to them and I told everyone it was going to be okay. I missed everyone I was packed with, and so did Chip. He looked at me and hoped that he would get back to his family, I didn’t want to go back. I don’t want to suffer from these humans. I know the truth, unlike most of the food. We reached the peak, or at least the shelf to return Chip to his family. He climbed up the crinkled back and said his last goodbye to me before he jumped in.  I often wondered what happen to Chip, this is the last time I saw him.