Banana. Bane of my existence.
I have long fought the good fight against the banana. It’s a
slick fruit, just too large in size to be ignored. Pungent-smelling,
invasive-tasting, terrible-joke-inducing banana.
It really has no business hanging around, anyway, getting in
my way in fruit salads and smoothies. It is political, and probably perfectly
enjoyable in its natural habitat. This habitat is, incidentally, far, far away
from me.
In any case, the banana is unavoidable.
In working at the French school, I try to turn a blind
nostril to the revolting specimens I have to unpeel for children in the
lunchroom. I try to remain professional when they spit and cry over some kind
of dispute on the playground, their mouths full of that horrifically textured
fruit. I look the other way when they bring out those obscene plastic banana
cases, which I originally thought to be some kind of crass adult joke but
apparently actually serve to protect the insufficiently-wrapped-by-nature
growths.
These last couple of weeks I proctored extended-time
exams for 4th and 5th grade. These are the first few
years of introduction to the lifelong skill of bubble-filling, and so the
little French natives and the attention-challenged and the variously blocked
got to hang out in a little room with me and all the time in the world.
There was, in my room, a wooden fruit basket.
I got through that week. And the next, when one of the girls
brought in specimen after specimen to reek up my tiny classroom, only to be
broken on the final day when she brought in… banana bread. I persisted though,
I refused to be broken. I continued my shift and eventually went down into the
playground to watch over the kidlings and extract as many jokes as possible in
exchange for drawing-paper.
Knock Knock.
Who’s there
Banana.
Banana who?
Knock Knock…
Why do bananas wear suntan lotion?
Because they peel.
Why are bananas never lonely?
Because they hang out in bunches.
What was Beethoven’s favorite fruit?
BananaNA.
…
One day, banana, one day I will best you.
