Banana - Rama

The latest issue of The New Yorker includes an amusing article on the general ridiculousness of eating bananas.

This struck a chord with me. When I was growing up in the 50s, banana consumption was limited to human infants and to chimps in Tarzan movies. With the Health Food Craze of the 80s, bananas became "the perfect food", full of potassium and low in calories. Air Products employees would emerge from the Cafeteria with coffee in one hand and a banana in the other. The sight of an executive "suit" carrying a banana always cracked me up. I imagined them morphing into Tarzan's pet chimp, Cheetah, and leaping into a backflip while cackling maniacally in their Brooks Brothers suit and wingtips.

Even more amusing is the etiquette of banana consumption. What do you do with the peel? Joe Executive is faced with a dilemma. He must conduct a "breakfast" meeting or interview. He needs to impress us with his health consciousness by eating that banana while we peons chow down on doughnuts. Clearly, he cannot remove the entire peel and place his hands on the white, squishy, eminently bruisable fruit itself. It would make the requisite post-meeting handshake a stomach-turner.

So he peels the fruit about half-way and takes a bite. Now he has got a stringy bright yellow peel flopping around his wrist and everyone's eyes are on it as opposed to his Power Point presentation. Will it self-peel as Joe Executive gesticulates and the fruit spurts into the air? That prospect is a lot more interesting than the Lost Time Accident Rate from our facilities in Brazil. What will he do with the peel when the fruit is gone? Will it sit on his lectern looking like a mutant yellow spider changing form as gravity flattens it? Again, that sight is a distraction from the Power Point. Then there is that rotting banana odor emanating from the peel. Not only are our eyes distracted but so are our noses.

Call it coincidence, but when American executives breakfasted on doughnuts and cigarettes, our cars, steel, and appliances ruled the world. After three decades of health-conscious, banana breakfasting, the Japanese, Chinese, and Europeans lost their fear and respect of American business and took over those markets. Save the bananas for Cheetah, guys!