Bananas Have Mean Faces

Have you ever thought about things that have been in your head since you can remember and then one day it occurs to you that not everyone sees things that way? I have this mental image of a round elevator door window where my cousins lived when we were all very young.

When the elevator arrived it would create a sort of crescent-within-a-round moon shape in the window. For some reason, the crescent-within-a round image would come back to me when I saw certain other things — the drain in the toilet, the hole in the chain posts meant to keep us off the grass in the apartment complex where we lived then, or the crescent of an adult’s nail cuticle (they look so big when you’re a little kid.)

Somewhere, someone flipping through their tarot cards will tell me that a past-life regression would reveal all these odd moon-hole images to be a result of birth trauma or a former incarnation when I participated in Japanese moon-viewing ceremonies (tsukimi) or some such other thing. I think I just notice weird things that stick in my head and find synergy.

Which brings me to the bananas. Only recently did I realize I have always seen something in bananas no one else does.

I don’t dislike bananas but I certainly don’t love them. They are not a fun fruit like blueberries, or wholesome like apples. They are not round, which is just WRONG, they are unpleasantly mushy and they sometimes upset my stomach. I never understood the appeal (appeal!  *snort*) of a banana split when one could just as easily have nuts or strawberries.

But here’s the thing about bananas. It’s their mean little faces.  As a kid I’d look at the slices my mother would put on my breakfast cereal and those tiny seeds looked 1) unappetizing and 2) like sour, mean little faces, all screwed up like they were saying “nyaahh!” No, I am NOT saying I heard them say “nyaah” — no need to call in the white coats. But they were … lets say … off-putting.  And definitely unfriendly.

I do buy Filipino banana ketchup because it’s interesting, and even the occasional banana for smoothies and the like,  and I even was pleasantly surprised at the yumminess of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream, but I won’t look at the banana faces.

Come on, now! Tell me honestly, don’t you see it?