Over the last few months, the UMass Boston community has been mulling over one serious question: Is Bobby Beacon the father of Bool Beacon? Ever since Bool, now wrapping up the first semester of his freshman year, stepped onto campus, there has been much speculation over his potential familial relation to our esteemed lighthouse-man of a mascot. Much of this has stemmed from the fact that Bool grew up with an absent father and also happens to be the only other lighthouse-shaped person known to exist. However, after a paternity test was conducted, a startling twist revealed itself: Bobby Beacon is not the father.
Many have been left scratching their heads in disbelief. How is it possible that the two aren’t related? Perhaps there had been a mistake, as Peter’s Discount Paternity Testing is known for its fair share of screw-ups, and Bobby’s DNA has most likely become pretty damaged after years of sucking raw, radioactive fish residue off the ocean floor. That being said, the news that Bobby is now officially “off the hook” has led to mixed responses, most prominently from the Beacon himself.
“What, you think I was actually looking forward to being a father?” asked Bobby rhetorically. “Oh, please! Fatherhood. It’s all a big, fat waste of my time! The next thing you know I’ll be spouting off evil plans of world domination and having sex with a bunch of fish, and we all know where that leads. Bool will be standing on a beach with a merman for a stepbrother, watching a baboon-butt monkey run around while he stares into the cold, lifeless chasms of my eyes and ska-dooshes me into the next life. I’ll pass, thank you very much.”
While it’s safe to say that Bobby’s relationship with his own father is a complicated one, Bool was hopeful that, had he been the son of Bobby, it would have begun a whole new chapter of his life. Sadly, though, it appears the book of Bool will spend another listless eternity collecting dust, in the metaphorical Walmart $1 discount-reading bin where it’s sat dormant for the past 19 years.
“You know what they say about expectations, keep ’em low,” replied Bool, in regard to the test results. “Bobby’s a really cool guy and between our shared love of ’90s video games and Taco Bell, I just felt like we had so much in common. Now he wants nothing to do with me… again. He hasn’t so much as looked at me since finding out he’s in the clear. Guess I’m back to being Bool the Ghoul. I’m just a sad, lonely boy who wants to find his dad. Is that too much to ask?”
As it turns out, apparently, not in the slightest. After spending a suspicious amount of time in the spider-infested, dimly lit basement of his obvious money-laundering front of a medical practice, Dr. Peter Paternity—yes, that’s his name—discovered the truth. Through the use of questionable connections to the FBI’s criminal database, he found Bool’s biological father to be alive and well, and similarly to his son, he appears to be living off of Sodexo food products. However, instead of being a college student, it looks like he inhabits the other end of the imprisonment spectrum.
The dad-of-the-year is currently living out year number 18 of a lifelong sentence in Florida State Prison, for a 2005 attempted bank robbery with a stick of dynamite lodged between his pantless butt cheeks. You heard that right, folks—butt cheeks. Bool’s father isn’t a Beacon at all, he’s a human. He’s Some Guy Named Mike.
Two humans giving birth to a Beacon boy may sound like the strangest anomaly since a couch gave birth to a sweaty, naked Danny DeVito, but according to Dr. Paternity, the explanation behind this is rooted firmly in genetics. Drawing out a rudimentary Punnett square, the good doctor used his middle-school-level grasp of science to justify his logic.
“Examining the DNA of both Bobby and Bool, I have discovered that science has been wrong in classifying Beacons as their own species when in fact, genetically speaking, they’re human. The reasoning behind them being lighthouses is actually due to an extremely rare recessive gene being turned on. Technically, there’s a one in 24 billion chance that any two humans could pump out a lighthouse. As for when on the timeline this gene arose, I’m not sure, but it seems to be ancient, potentially before humans were even a prominent lifeform.”
Now, I’m no scientist, but given what we’ve learned this past semester about the ancient Beans, it seems more than plausible that there could have been a sentient species of lighthouses that ruled the Earth pre-Bean, and that there could have been some intermingling between the two species. This is probably sounding like a recent episode of “Ancient Aliens,” but hear me out. We know for a fact that the Beans and the early humans were doing the deed, which resulted in the species of human beans that we know and love today. Therefore, it’s not hard to imagine that the elusive Beacon gene has been passed on to us somewhere along this process like a time-jumping, hot potato STD.
Following this dramatic chain of events, Bool has expressed little to no interest in contacting his real father. In his mind, Some Guy Named Mike is nothing more than a dirty deadbeat, although Bool has admitted to being confused as to why his mother never mentioned this relationship, and why she wouldn’t have considered him a potential candidate for being the father. Well, in perhaps the most shocking twist of all, it turns out that Bool’s mother, Delilah Bacon, has known the truth this entire time.
“Look, I was a different person back then,” Bacon said regretfully. “Being with Some Guy Named Mike is the biggest regret of my life, and after I planted that stick of dynamite in his a— and sent him to the bank to cash that check for me, I thought I’d be home free. Then, after he was locked up, I found out I was pregnant. I didn’t want Bool to know the disappointing truth about his dad, so I acted like I didn’t know. When it came time for him to apply for college, I worked my mommy magic and subtly pushed him toward applying to UMass Boston. I figured he’d get one look at Bobby and put two and two together.”
Other than going through the effort of doing all that, Bacon also claimed to have lied to Bool, telling him his last name was “Beacon” in an attempt to make it seem as though Bobby was the father. When asked what her connection to Bobby had been, she said that the two of them had dated for a while back in the day, shortly before Some Guy Named Mike left the picture. As to why she never believed Bobby could’ve been the father, she explained:
“Bobby was a nice guy. He was funny, spontaneous and surprisingly gentle once you break through the wall of obnoxious insecurity he erected around himself. At the time, he was a nice break from reality, but I never wanted anything serious with him. Between you and me, he had a hard time shining his light, so in terms of him potentially being the father, I knew that was pretty unlikely. The guy’s about as impotent and sexually immature as you’d expect a flickering beacon to be.”
Bobby Beacon has denied such allegations.