"Damn Beanos Do Nothing But Drink Ginger Ale And Eat Cheese!"

I know you're asking yourself what a Beano is. A Beano is actually a derogatory term that we came up with for Albanians. You see I grew up in a town where everyone's parents are off the boat from some country. I am actually Irish, and I had a Korean and an Albanian friend growing up in the notoriously rough neighborhood of the 'Skill.

One of our favorite pastimes in our hood was sitting on the stoops of the mean streets of Cresskill and pointing out our differences and ridiculing them until there was permanent emotional scarring. I am Irish so was often told that I was an alcoholic boozer with small genitalia that would fight at the drop of a hat. I would often tell my Asian friend to go prove a theorem. It was a hoot.

Just last week I found out that my new neighbors were letting their dog defecate in my backyard. I asked my Asian friend if I could get a life sized cutout of him wearing an apron to act like a scarecrow so the dogs would stay out of my yard. He then told me he wished my fair skin got exposed to too many UV rays and that I got melanoma and died.

Anyway, our Albanian friend often felt left out because we had no stereotypes to unfairly categorize him with. We felt really guilty that we couldn't ignorantly degrade him and his heritage.

We noticed that every time we went to his house that there was a cheese dish of some kind so we figured we can say that all Albanians love cheese. We also realized that he had ginger ale at his house. So all Albanians love cheese and ginger ale. Brilliant!

Now we needed a horrible racial epithet to scream at him. We did some kind of a word jumble and then came up with "Beano". We weren't finished though so we thought we needed to come up with some ethnic jokes about them too so he would really fit in so here are some that we came up with:

"Hey, did you hear about the Albanian that was scared to go into the fridge? Yeah, he heard there was Muenster(cheese) in there."

"How do you keep a group of Albanians from mugging a guy? Throw them a two liter bottle of Ginger Ale."

"Did you hear about them stopping the Beanos from entering Canada? Yeah, they tried to drink Canada Dry." I know it makes no sense but it deals with Albanians and ginger ale.

Anyway, we started to unfairly stereotype him and his family on a daily basis to his delight. It wasn't until a few years ago that I found out that thousands of Albanians were being ethnically cleansed. Who would have known that all I had to do was find a pen pal over there who would have had more than their fair share of stereotypes for me?

I hate to admit though that one of my favorite cuisines of the world is actually Albanian. I love their signature dish of grilled cheese and ginger ale.