Banana Apocalypse 

No need for fanfare, disaster has been quietly averted. You’re welcome 

I only really know a few things but I do know this: there are a few absolutes in this world and if they fall apart, I’m no expert, but I think those are signs of the apocalypse. So not to alarm you but when I made eggs this morning there was no shredded cheese in our refrigerator. This might not seem like a warning sign in and of itself but there was also no shredded cheese in the freezer. (I’ll pause while you compose yourself) Having shredded cheese in our freezer is one of those absolutes, one of the signs. I say signs because there’s other things that we always have in the freezer.

Now, don’t worry, all the signs haven’t aligned. And I have righted the universe. I bought several LARGE bags of shredded cheese today and got it in the freezer just as fast as possible. I’m a little spooked though. As I said the other signs haven’t aligned but just to be sure I bought Cool Whip, frozen bread dough, frozen cinnamon rolls and frozen hash browns. Far be it from me to tempt fate or anger God. It would absolutely RUIN my year if the world ended. And yet I have to confess, I’m no savior here. Like all humans, I am deeply flawed.

In my journey to the bottom of the freezer I unearthed not one, not two but SIX frozen bananas. You know the ones. They’re black as coal, ensconced in plastic like some sort of corpse in “Swordfish” or Ted Williams’s head. They’re just waiting there for an altruistic someone to decide to make several loaves of banana bread. They’re a patient lot, many of them having languished in our freezer since the mid-90’s which is a long time especially when you consider we’ve moved twice and gotten a new freezer in that time. So, yes, we have bananas and the world will keep spinning on its axis. But these aren’t just any bananas.

We have bananas that could they tell a tale of veggies trashed because of freezer burn. Leftovers that were never identifiable (we thought it might be soup. It wasn’t). Those bananas have seen things, things that can’t be unseen I tell you. They know the heartache of beef heart misidentified as roast that was given reprieve even before them. (If you’ve never had a heart sandwich, my advice: don’t) Yes, our bananas are the Count of Monte Christo of cryogenics, the Papillion of pot luck and the Red Redding of re-heating. Our bananas have been around enough to know that hope is a dangerous thing. So imagine how that single, solitary banana felt when I placed it on the counter to thaw as I dug for cheese. It must have been elated.

Finally, here was redemption. Finally, freedom had been visited upon this long-frigid fruit. Today would be the day when he/she (?) would pass over to the other side. I imagine it must have been a religious experience made all the more divine because bananas aren’t even very good church-goers. They’re just not a spiritual sort. It’s just that it had been so long, so cold, and so dark unless someone opened the door. I can’t imagine the purgatorial pining’s of that banana, but I’m sure it, like me, thought “This is the day.” As it lay there on the counter, slowly feeling the room’s warmth envelope it and return its once mushy flesh to its rightful state from the rock hard existence it had known for so long I can’t doubt it must have been moved.

Do bananas have feelings? (I don’t want to get too existential with you here) but I think they do. I think every banana, like us humans; want to be useful in their lifetime. I think they want to leave a legacy, to contribute and after they’ve been consumed I think they’d all like a little laugh as they watch someone slip and fall on the remnants of them. To be fair who doesn’t like to see that? There are whole YouTube channels devoted to people falling down. That’s why it’s so heartbreaking to have to admit to you. I put the banana back

Now please don’t hate me, I had good intentions and I do love banana bread (we all do) but I just didn’t have the time. There were things to do, a kitchen drawer to fix (that’s another story of a long-time feud full of cursing, crime and punishment, sound and fury, signifying nothing (thank you Dostoyevsky and Faulkner)) and I needed to hit the gym and there was the little issue of showering…. It was just too much.

So I’m before you today needing like we all do sometimes, just a little bit of grace. Yes, I’ve done wrong by the banana, I freely admit that. I should have, could have, been better and excuses are like armpits: we’ve all got them and they all stink. Yes I cleaned that up a bit, but thank you anyway, Randy Cain. I need your forgiveness and in my defense there was the whole threat of the looming cheese apocalypse that needed to be avoided. Most of all I need the banana’s forgiveness but I don’t think I’ll ever really know if I’ve received it and there’s perhaps the larger lesson. Yes I do have a point and if you’ll stick around I might actually come to it.

See, I knew a guy once who had a heart scare and when his friend visited him in the hospital he admitted from his hospital bed how he had always regretted something that took place years ago. This had been weighing on his mind for many, many years and at that point in time where he might be looking at the end he just had to get it off his chest. It was an emotional thing for him and a good, cathartic thing but here’s the kicker. His friend? The one he had so apparently, egregiously wronged all those years ago? He hadn’t even considered what happened a slight. He had in fact, forgotten completely the details of this so-called sin that his friend so emotionally requested forgiveness for there in the hospital. Of course, he gave it to him.

Now, the guy made a full recovery. As I said it was just a scare but the friend (who told me the story) did so with incredulity. “Can you imagine” he said, “him carrying that around all these years? Having it bother him and eat at him? When I, the one he thought he’d wronged, didn’t think a thing about it?” And there it is ladies and gentlemen; the point of all this nonsense (told you I’d get there).

Give it up, let it out, confess, request forgiveness and go on with living your life. If you don’t, you’re a banana in a freezer, waiting for someone else to redeem you when they may have no idea you’re suffering, harboring regret and hoping for someone to say it’s okay. The object of your transgression may be as inconsequential as another bag of cheese from the last millennium, forgotten amongst the Cool Whip and bread dough and hash browns. Long covered by all the other frozen artifacts, it’s almost certainly not the apocalypse we have built it up to be. We all need forgiveness and we all want to forgive. Allow the ones you’ve wronged to do this. I think they’ll take you up on it. Although I’m not too sure on that banana; I think he gave me a dirty look as the door swung shut and the light turned off.

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