BananaNA.

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 4^th and 5^th 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.

This fruit basket was the inexplicable source of mirth and hilarity for the boys I was testing. The bananas came out. They fake-ate them and fake shot each other with them and sneaked them when my back was turned, placing them in their desks or on their answer sheets. They bee-lined towards them during breaks, refusing to take a short walk or draw or play hangman in favor of peals of wooden-banana fueled laughter that disrupted the surrounding classrooms and shamed me in front of my colleagues. “Get a hold of your students, woman! They're just bananas!” Just bananas indeed.

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.