Banana from Heaven

 

“Is that a banana in your pocket or are you just happy to settle for a mediocre fruit?”

 

This is the question too few banana enthusiasts ask themselves as they sift through a pile of the yellow monstrosities. 

 

I know what you’re going to say: Bananas are good for you. That may be true. But are they great for you? Have you ever heard of someone barging into a room yelling about the pure ecstasy from their peeled yellow member? I haven’t. It’s because it’s never happened. No one has ever stopped traffic with a message from God that bananas are divine nutrition. 

 

There are good bananas. Lots of them. There are bad bananas. Many of them. But there are no great bananas. It’s a fruit with limited possibilities. It lacks the hope and dreams of a peach. Many peaches taste like rotting trash, but some will change your life like gazing up at the aurora borealis. Plums strive for perfection, as do guavas and nearly every type of berry. Bananas depend on our collective lack of imagination. They require the laziness of human beings to accept defeat.  

 

Don’t give me arguments about bread, cake, and cookies. If you must bake something to make it delicious by dumping sugar, butter, or into the mix, that’s clear circumvention of the rules. Raspberries stand alone, judged as the lord made them B.C. (before crème). A banana split is nice, but any other fruit that holds its own would be better. 

 

It’s why the greatest contribution of the banana is to hardwood floors in the service of physical comedy. The peel is what mankind needs. With so many comedians working on crafting better jokes, they should be working on crafting better injuries. What people want to see is not a punchline but a punch line. A row of subpar acts getting hit in the face by a wide assortment of fresh produce. Because even mediocre talent deserve projectiles that are anything but.