Spinach: Woe, banana.

Yesterday, I had an emotional breakdown. It was all because of a banana. Now, I know that I write about bananas a lot on here - either I identify with them or I’ve eaten too many of them, maybe both.  Maybe I just like the word “banana.”  Speaking of which, have you ever eaten a peanut butter and chocolate covered banana?  If not, please do, thank me later.

But back to today.  It was in the restroom at work.  The breakdown, I mean. 

And the banana. 

Or what was left of it. 

There it lay, the skin (or, as you might call it, the peel), tossed in among heaps of paper towels, crammed down, flowing over, heaped up; what might have been a small tree, once upon a time.  And amid it all, like a yellow M&M in a bowl of damply buttered popcorn, lay the banana skin.  It had been out in the air for a while – probably tossed there early in the morning by someone who had, undoubtedly, chewed on it in their cubicle with grating teeth and slavering lips.  

And I, seeing it, thought, “Once, this was a banana. Once, it grew fair and yellow upon a tree, somewhere warm, and it knew the sunshine, and it knew the rain, and it knew the long nimble fingers that harvested it along with its family, fingers that had harvested thousands of bananas, millions of bananas, picking them green and sending them out into the ravenous and ungrateful world.  And now here it lies – wilted, withered, and rank, in the stale air of the medically-peach-painted bathroom, smelling of pink soap and toilet water and damp hands.  It will never see the sun again, and it has long been parted from its brothers and sisters.  Its heart has been devoured, and yet, it does not mourn for that...that is what it was made for.  It has fulfilled its purpose, and has resigned its brown-speckled, earthly body to a just and peaceful rest.  

But not here!  It seemed as if it was crying to me: ‘Not in this place!  Lay me down where I can feel the breeze and watch people going by, or be chewed on by an inconsequential chipmunk or caterpillar.  Don’t put me in a plastic grave, along with stained paper and spit-out gum!  Don’t mourn for me, but treat my body with respect, or at the very least, throw me in the path of a clown and laugh at me.’ 

All these thoughts raced through my mind in a matter of seconds, and I simultaneously shed a true tear and laughed into my own face...

...but, if I had had a spade, I may have dug the banana a grave in the empty lot next door, and sat by it, for a while.