The Banana Problem

The Banana Problem has vexed me for years. I lay awake at night, hours upon hours, pondering and contemplating and furrowing my brow in intense concentration, but to no avail. The solution will not wash relief over me, because relief simply will not come. Like the Gordian Knot, this conundrum will never be untied.

I simply cannot figure out a way to efficiently purchase and eat bananas.

I buy 7 bananas, which is the usual size for a bushel. Because I am not a gorilla, I rarely eat more than one banana a day. By Day 7, the bananas look like Adam Sandler's foot in Mr. Deeds, and have the rough consistency of cottage cheese.

My solution? Buy the bananas green. But then I'm stuck for the first few days eating bananas that are not yet ripe and thus unpeelable. Remember CDs, many decades ago, how they used to come in those impenetrable plastic sleeves that no technology could pierce? That's kind of how these green bananas are, and, like the plastic covers, they also taste like crap.

So buying bananas turned into summer camp. It sucks for the first couple of days, because all the homesick kids can't stop crying and the counselors haven't yet realized they're only in charge of 12 year-olds and haven't yet stopped acting like the Ithaca Police Department. Then there's a great few days in the middle where the bananas are perfect, and everyone is drunk off sun and summer and Kumbayaing and all that happy bullshit. Then the last few days suck, since people start to mutiny because they just realized that they haven't seen girls, showered with hot water or had food other than beans for two weeks.

So, bottom line, I never know when the hell to buy bananas, at what point in their burgeoning ripeness, nor how many. It never works. And it kills me. Such is the banana problem, which no amount of technology can solve.

Perhaps I'll switch to apples.