Jelly Beans, Mother
Teresa & Mu
 I don’t think I
can relate the isolated jelly bean to Naples very
easily. True, there is a jelly-bean type of
confection called caramelle
mu or muu
in Italy—not just Naples—but both forms are
misspellings of mou,
French for “soft,” as in some types of soft, filled
sweets. That has produced a few jokes in Italian
about the cow that walks into a sweets shop and asks
for “Muuuuu
candy.” That sheds some light on the bovine
sense of humor, but not much on the jelly-bean
connection to Naples.
But what if I could connect Naples to someone who is
somehow connected to jelly-beans? That would work;
jelly beans and Naples would then be related perhaps
in the way that distant cousins in Russian novels
are—legally not very, but it sure helps the plot
along. Besides, it is the only way I can work
in the story that follows, a tale that comes to me
from Prof. Warren Johnson. I am truly indebted to
him for this. It made me feel good and I hope it
makes you feel good, too. As a preface, know only
that there is, indeed, a real Mother Teresa
connection to Naples. There is a square named for her,
and her Sisters of Calcutta do benevolent work in their mission in
the historic center of the city. For the rest, here
is Prof. Johnson:
Mother Teresa and the
Jelly Bean Caper
You'd think Jelly Beans
grow on trees, so abundant are they in America. It
is difficult to believe that in some places they are
so hard to come by. That accounts for a phone call
from the mystery woman.
Early one evening she called on the
basis of advice she had received elsewhere and
wondered if my wife could get her a bag of Jelly
Beans. I found it amusing that anyone would treat
candy as a serious subject, put the idea behind me and
headed for school, a much more dignified place to be.
A few days later at breakfast, I remembered the call
and wondered, "What happened to the bag of Jelly
Beans? Karin confided that she got not one bag, but
three bags. That sounded interesting. The mysterious
lady would get one bag and we'd get two. I
misunderstood the seriousness of the situation.
As it turned out, Karin had already sent the candy by
express to an address in a German city just this side
of Switzerland. In the middle of the night, a
courier arrived in a limousine, picked up the box, and
spirited it across the border to three waiting nuns
who packed its contents into their carry-on bags. They
were heading for Calcutta and had a flight to catch.
According to the mystery woman, Mother Teresa had
developed a sweet tooth for Jelly Beans during her
visit to the UN, and when the nuns asked if there was
anything they could bring, Mother Teresa told them, "a
bag of Jelly Beans." Karin could not leave well enough
alone and sent three bags so none of the nuns would
arrive empty-handed.
Michael, who was very young then, listened to the
details of the caper and then asked, "Who is Mother
Teresa?" Karin answered, "She is a wonderful nun
who has done great things to help the poor and will
surely be called a Saint one day!"
Michael took that in and looked at his mother with
adoring admiration before asking, "Does that mean you
are a Saint, too?"
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