The Banana Chronicles

My brother-in-law is a “Daily Banana” kind of guy. Every day he eats a banana while driving his truck to work. When he finishes the banana he throws the skin on the floor of the vehicle in front of the passenger seat.  He does not bother to keep a plastic trash bag in his truck. He does not bother throwing the banana skin in the trash bin at the next opportunity. Instead he lets the banana skins accumulate on the floor of the truck for several days, until the pile of rotting and drying skins become a shovel load of compost for the garden.

Sometimes my brother-in-law visits his elderly mother at the nursing home during the day, and sometimes he takes her out in his truck for lunch. Every time she gets into the passenger seat of the truck she says “Son, why do you have to leave rotten banana skins on the floor of the car?” She kept on complaining till he started to take the skins out of the car before going to visit her. But sometimes he forgets and gets an earful from his mother again. So now if he forgets he might pick a dry shriveled banana skin off the floor of the truck and put it in the top pocket of his shirt before his mother gets in the vehicle.

One evening we were all at a barbeque party at a relative’s house. His mother was telling some cousins about her son and his dirty habit of leaving banana skins on the floor of the truck. The cousins were all laughing at the story when my brother-in-law checked his pocket and, lo & behold, there was a dried up banana skin in his shirt pocket.

I too have a “Daily Banana” habit. Just like my brother-in-law I eat a banana every day in my truck on the way to work. I also pick up a cup of coffee. After I eat the banana I throw the skin on the floor just like my brother-in-law. When I finish the coffee, I stuff the banana skin into the coffee cup and pop the plastic lid back on and throw it in the trash bin at the next opportunity. But often I do not finish the coffee so the skin goes straight to the trash bin. The remaining coffee goes with me to my office for consumption later when I re-heat it in the microwave.

The other day I went to re-heat my coffee in the microwave in the afternoon. When I took it out of the microwave and put the cup to my lips, instead of hot coffee I got the taste of burnt banana skin. I forgot I had finished the coffee that day and put the skin into the cup. Yech!