# Counting Beans My name's Otis and I'm eight and three-quarters, which basically means I'm almost an adult. Last week, Mrs. Humphreys decided we had to save the world using beans. Beans. I'm not joking. She put us in groups, and it got real serious real fast. First, there were the Bean Feeders. They wore aprons, even though no one asked them to, and kept talking about feeding the hungry. My best friend Josie said they just wanted an excuse to eat beans all day without anyone yelling at them. Then, there were the Bean Doctors. They printed pamphlets and gave presentations about how beans could stop heart attacks, make you taller, and probably help you see in the dark. I mean, if you believed everything they said, beans would probably turn us into superheroes. Next came the Bean Protectors. They marched around with posters of happy cows and smiling chickens, telling everyone beans would save animals' lives. Benny whispered that beans weren't saving his dog's life because every time Benny ate beans, his dog ran away. But the weirdest group was definitely the Bean Counters. These kids were strange. They had scales, calculators, and even borrowed Mr. Fletcher’s laptop to make charts. They didn't cook beans or eat beans or even talk much about beans. They just counted beans. They counted them again. They weighed them. They argued about which bean was best. Bobby, their leader, wrote super long papers nobody wanted to read and kept saying, "If our math is right, we'll be heroes!" Today was Bean Project Presentation Day. Mrs. Humphreys asked us to share what we'd done. Bean Feeders fed everyone chili, Bean Doctors handed out leaflets, and Bean Protectors did a play with dancing beans and cows. Everyone clapped. Then the Bean Counters stood up. Bobby cleared his throat and said, "Our calculations show precisely how many beans each group should have used to maximize their impact." But then Mrs. Humphreys smiled a bit funny and asked, "Did you actually use any beans?" Bobby blinked and looked at his teammates. They shook their heads slowly, their scales and calculators suddenly looking pretty useless. "Well," Mrs. Humphreys said gently, "sometimes you can do so much counting that you forget about doing." Everyone laughed, even the Bean Counters. Bobby turned red, then shrugged and said, "Okay, next time, we'll count marshmallows instead."