Once upon a time…

There was a boy named Jack. He lived with his mother in a tiny village. They were very poor. Unlike Aladdin, this was in a Cinderella place where women couldn’t work or have money. So after Jack's dad died, they were doomed to slowly starve to death.

Jack wanted to work, really he did, but he had this problem that he was super lazy. Whenever he got hired for a job, he’d do like a quarter of it and then wander off for a nap. Eventually people stopped hiring him for jobs. So Jack and his mom resorted to selling everything they owned.

Eventually it came time to sell the family cow. Jack’s mom told him to take the cow to market and sell it. So he tied a rope around the cow’s neck and led her down the road leading into town.

Lucky for Jack, he didn’t have to go all the way! When he reached a crossroad, a funny looking man was standing there.

Jack was like “Hey! You look funny.”

The man nodded. “Yeah, I get that a lot. Are you planning on selling that cow?”

Jack said yes.

The man was like “Well, today’s your lucky day! I have three magic beans here that I was hoping to trade for a cow! How about it, kid?”

And Jack was like “Magic beans?! Heck yeah!!” And handed over the cow.

The funny-looking man handed over the beans, and promptly vanished.

Deciding not to question that, Jack wandered home to show his mom the beans. …After he took a nap.

By the time he woke up and got home, it was already time for dinner. His mom was annoyed, but knew her son well enough to not have expected him to be home while it was still light out. She asked what he’d sold the cow for.

Jack beamed. “Beans!”

His mom nodded. “A trade? Ok, sure, I can work with that. We can eat some of the beans and plant the rest. A garden is a good investment. Where are the beans?”

Jack held out the three beans.

His mom was like “…And the rest of them?”

Jack was like “This is it! Three beans! But the best part is, they’re magic beans!”

Jack’s mom, rather than murder him, grabbed those beans and yeeted them out the window. And then, instead of food for dinner, she gave Jack a lecture. Mostly because they didn’t have any food. She sent him to bed and sat down at the table, wondering if she should take the Hansel and Gretel route and abandon him somewhere to be eaten by wolves.

During the night, the beans sprouted. Against all odds, it turns out the beans really were magic! They grew and grew, until they reached the sky.

When Jack woke up, the beanstalks were so tall they blocked the sun. He went outside and looked up, trying to see where they ended. All he could see was where they faded into the clouds.

As he had nothing better to do, he decided to climb to the top.

Ok, so, Disney didn’t make a musical princess movie about this story, so my interest in it as a child was near zero. There’s a good chance that I might be mixing what happens next with a different story with a kid named Jack as the main character. There were a lot of those.

It took Jack almost all day, but as the sun was setting he climbed through the layer of clouds and reached the top of the beanstalk. To his amazement, he found himself at the gate of a giant castle.

Now, Jack was rather emaciated from not having had a proper meal in a year or so, so fitting through the bars of the gate was easy for him. He was, compared to the size of everything else, about the size of a housecat. He explored the outside of the castle, finding a garden full of giant vegetables (which he ate), a giant pond, and a giant croquet field. He found the croquet balls, and discovered they were made out of solid gold! So he tied one to his back with a couple giant lettuce leaves, and went back to the beanstalk.

Just as he got to the gate, it swung open. Jack dove into a nearby bush as a giant walked in.

The giant sniffed, and spoke:

“Fe if fo fum,

I smell the blood of an Englishman!”

The giant looked around, but couldn’t find Jack. So he gave up and went into the castle.

Jack booked it back to the beanstalk and climbed down as fast as he could. When he got to the bottom, he gave his mom the solid gold croquet ball (and the lettuce), which she sold to the local king. They got enough money for it to live for months!

But eventually the money ran low, and Jack still hadn’t found a job. So his mom told him to climb up the beanstalk again and get some balls.

It didn’t take Jack quite as long to climb up as it had the first time, since he was no longer dying of starvation. He got to the top and slid through the gate. He wondered what was inside the castle. After all, if the croquet balls were solid gold, what would the cutlery and dinnerware be made of? So he found an open window and climbed through.

To his surprise, he found himself in a giant kitchen. He climbed onto the table and found a giant loaf of bread and a giant wheel of cheese, so he sat down and had lunch. As he was finishing up, he spotted a non-giant goose that had a distinct gold color. He wandered over to the goose, and saw it was sitting on a freshly-laid egg of solid gold.

So Jack tucked the goose under his arm and climbed back down the beanstalk.

The mom quickly figured out that the goose laid solid gold eggs, and started selling them off. It went well for a couple months, until Jack (being a total moron) decided he didn’t want to wait for that day’s egg, and cut the goose open to get it.

Yep.

So they didn’t have any more golden eggs. Jack’s mom yelled at him for like two straight hours about that, and then sent him back up the beanstalk.

This time it was evening when he got up there. His head popped through the clouds just as the giant returned home from work. He snuck through the door after the giant, who apparently had lost his sense of smell.

The giant made and ate dinner, while Jack watched. After eating, the giant pulled a harp out of his cupboard and sat it on the table.

“Sing,” the giant ordered.

To Jack’s surprise, the harp started singing. It sang and sang, as the giant sat there and crocheted. TV and radio hadn’t been invented yet, so this was about the most exciting thing Jack had ever seen. He had to have it.

Finally the giant finished crocheting his mom a scarf, and locked the harp away before going to bed. Jack waited until he heard snoring, and snuck over to the cupboard.

Thankfully for Jack, the harp was a normal, human-sized harp. Unfortunately for him, harps are still pretty huge. I mean, if someone has a harp it’s a major feature of their living room. Kind of like a grand piano. People can’t just pick those things up and waltz off with them.

Jack didn’t realize this. He unlocked the cupboard, grabbed the harp, and started dragging it to the door.

The harp started screaming. It was like “HELP HELP I’M BEING KIDNAPPED!!!!”

The giant heard the harp screaming, and ran to the living room, where he saw Jack.

“I’m going to grind your bones to make my bread!” the giant shouted, and dove for Jack.

“Nope!” Jack shouted, and booked it back to the beanstalk. He climbed down as fast as he could, but the giant followed him.

… Ok, again, I’m gonna change a slight detail.

The giant was like three times bigger than Jack, so he climbed down three times as fast. He quickly caught up to Jack, grabbed him, and took the thief back up to his home. Where he made him into a pie and ate for breakfast. Then he went out onto the clouds, grabbed the beanstalk, and ripped it out by the roots. He got enough beans to eat for like a month.

Jack’s mom cut her finger washing dishes and, this being the dark ages, died of sepsis a week later.