Whining on about Bananas

Knuckles

What is it with me and bananas? I buy them all the time because I like them, but without fail at least one banana out of every bunch ends up sitting on the kitchen counter until it slowly begins to resemble a mummy’s dick. Only then do I find it necessary to surreptitiously usher the neglected blackened mass into the trash. Trying to be clever about it, I’ve even taken to buying one or two fewer bananas off a bigger bunch only to realize days later that I’ve lost my intended focus once again and some poor banana has been allowed to mutate into an island paradise for fruit flies.

I’ve begun to wonder how much of Latin America’s banana crop ends up in the landfill each year thanks to obsessive-compulsive banana Bozos like me. That I keep buying them, only to casually witness one or two decay, serves as a nagging testament to my general dimness, as if I fucking need one more tangible confirmation of my dizzyingly cyclical ineptitude. I can’t seem to avoid viewing this kind of habitual behavior, however human, as being the small, unwavering acts of a knuckle head. No matter how I might try to hit the heights it seems I am ultimately best at leaving my fly undone or suavely trailing toilet paper from my heel.

A classic example of this tendency occurred during the latter Cretaceous Period when I was around twelve years old. I took it upon myself one afternoon to throw a dart up into the air thinking it might look cool, kind of like a rocket in flight. Alas, as I attempted to run away from the falling projectile it found a way to make a perfect bulls-eye landing on the top of my head.

I can still vividly recall the gleeful faces of my childhood buddies as they fell about, howling with delight at the sight of me dancing around in pain and horror with a bright red dart sticking out the top of my skull.

Akin to falling darts and my body farm for bananas, I also find that any kind of house cleanup ends up casting me into a depression. Yeah, the initial orderliness of it is gratifying but like the glass being half empty I’m far more conscious of my home’s inevitable backslide into finger smears, full litter boxes, and floor crumbs.

I could excuse my generally negative self-view as being a mid-life crisis except for the fact that I’ve felt this way about my life since I was the ripe old age of three. That George Bush exists, that the roof gutters need clearing, that I dutifully promise to record T.V. shows for my wife only to forget to turn on the VCR for the thirty-eighth friggin' time in a row does nothing to inspire me to adopt a more cheery world view.

Oh fuck! I forgot the laundry!