What’s up with foot-long bananas?

By Jean Mlincek
My sister called me to complain. Her
husband bought bananas. “Freakin’ foot-long bananas,” she says. “I’m
going to have to do the shopping from now on. I mean, who can eat a footlong
banana?” she queries. “Think about it, ” she moans. “Three of them laid end to end
measure the same as a yard stick! That’s abnormal!” “That’s pretty creepy,” I offer. She
continues her rant. “I can’t even eat a foot-long banana at one sitting!” she
pines. I suggest she get corn cob holders to stick in each end. “They
help with eating corn,” I advise. I start laughing to myself picturing her eating
a foot-long banana with corn cob holders poked into both ends. It’s a
perfect solution. Table for two. Dinner for Tarzan and Jane. She
interrupts my musing “These foot-long bananas would keep
King Kong at bay,” she says. “King Kong is dead,” I tell her, “which
is sad because he would go bananas for a foot-long.” I tell my sister that the
average American consumes over 27 pounds of bananas a year--or 90 bananas.
If they are the big ones, Thats 1,080 feet of bananas per year.
My sister is not amused by my calculations. Back to her husband, the
buyer of foot-long bananas. “I keep telling him to buy SMALL bananas,”
my sister tells me. “The foot-longs sit there on the kitchen counter, looking
like some alien life force. We had to move the toaster to make room for
them. I swear they are taking over my kitchen.”
I will say this. There are always a lot of bananas on my sister’s counter,
regardless of size, just as there were on my Mom’s when we were growing up.
Big bananas were the thing back then. When I was little, a banana also passed
as a telephone. If memory serves me right, my sister became a telephone
operator thanks to those big bananas. “I tell husband to pick up a BUNCH of
bananas, as in 5 or 6 SMALL ones, not those foot-longs that ripen before they
are eaten--unless you eat 2 yards of bananas in 3 days, per YOUR
calculations.” I don’t comment. My sister drones on. “He knows I hate bananas with brown
spots. I warn him that my limit per banana is 3 spots, period. This last time, the foot-longers
had at least 50 brown spots. You can’t even peel a banana
that ripe without its guts spewing out. ”“This is true,” I say, knowing my sister
could go on for two weeks and three days complaining about spots on bananas
if I allowed her to.. “I tell what’s his name (banana-fana?) to buy GREEN bananas,
but he claims there aren’tany out there.” I try to commiserate with my sister. “Yeah,
but give him a break; green bananas are definitely hard to find these days.
I think they are on back order.” I tell my sister that it’s not just bananas
that are huge. Lately, strawberries seem enormous, too. They are the size of
apples! BIG apples! I don’t think corn cob holders will work on a giant
strawberry. Or will they? 

Jean Mlincek is a free lance writer who resides in St. Petersburg, FL.

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