Bananas are like unstable dynamite... without the explosion

I decided to write today about an incident not related to writing whatsoever because I found it to be entertaining (I guess?)...

I have (had) a very lovely lunch bag that looked kind of like a purse. In fact, on a recent trip to Salida, CO, our housemates all thought it WAS my purse and questioned why I was keeping it in the fridge...

This lunch bag has a side pocket that is rather deep, as far as the size of the lunch bag goes. And in this pocket is where Fishubby (who packs my lunch for me every day, bless his heart) puts my banana.

I don't remember the last time I ate a banana was.

TANGENT: This one time I was eating a banana and found half a worm in it. Yeah. I kind of don't care for bananas because of that and scrutinize every bite I take if I do eat one. All around though? The texture of them gets me. So, yeah, thank you Fishubby for putting bananas in my lunch, but this is why they stay in my lunch forever and turn into unstable slow burning banana dynamite...

Okay, back to the story. From the tangent, you know that the banana in question was in my lunch bag outer pocket for... oh two weeks maybe? I knew there was also a Hershey's Kiss with Almonds in that side pocket.

I did not know about the banana. I wanted the Kiss.

So, here I am hankering for a little bit of chocolate, remembering my Kiss in the side pocket. I slide my hand into the pocket and encounter something that feels like a cold forearm, and then cold mud. I withdraw my hand with an audible gasp and an "Ew" and look at my fingers, covered in banana spooge.

After washing my hand, I think nothing of the incident. Now I know there's a gross banana in my lunch bag that needs to be removed when I get home, because Lawd knows I'm not going to remove some black, now slightly squished banana from my lunch bag while I'm sitting at my desk at work! What if someone saw that nasty thing?

However, I decided about half an hour later that I would just take my lunch bag and dump the side pocket out.

This is where the unstable dynamite (sans explosion) comes in. You see, when I poked the banana with my unwitting fingers, something happened... Some kind of molecular change...

I lifted my lunch bag out of my desk drawer to eradicate the black, mushy thing and what do I find? Banana juice... No... ROTTEN banana juice all over the inside of the desk drawer. Not only that, but I set the lunch bag on my LAP to peek inside the side pocket and felt the wet. The entire bottom of my lunch bag was drenched in rotten banana juices.

So now, not only do I have banana juice, stinky and smelling of rotten crotch, inside my desk drawer, but I have it on the knee of my pants, my hands, and some of it got on the strap on my nice REI Netbook bag stored in the same desk drawer.

I ended up throwing the lunch bag away. There was no way it was going to be saved. I sprayed my REI bag strap with some generic Febreeze that has a "Lavender Mint" scent that is kind of gross (but a huge improvement to rotten banana crotch), and wiped out the drawer with some "orange" scented cleaning stuff that smells like orange peels from the compost bucket.

So, that is my story. The banana was akin to unstable dynamite, sans explosion. It was the slow leaking kind.

I hope you enjoyed this bit of real life!

Reeking of rotten banana crotch,
Claire L. Fishback

Comments

Nick Wilford said…
I feel your pain, especially as you had an aversion to them in the first place. Don't be too hard on your hubby though, us men can never remember these little details!

This reminds me of tidying the kids' rooms and finding no-longer-used lunchboxes in their cupboards. When you open them, you find a small lump of green mould that was once a satsuma, which disintegrates at the touch and gives off a toxic emission while doing so. Mmmm!
Unknown said…
Um, I loved this. Sorry about the banana crotch stank and "spooge," as you brilliantly called it. Good stories come at a price, I guess. :)
Hi Nick,
Thanks for stopping by! Don't worry, I wasn't mad at my hubby. It was MY fault for not eating the banana (despite my aversion to them) when it was still yellow!

The "best" finds are the vegetable bags in the very bottom of the vegetable drawer in the fridge that contain some black fluid and a little purple-y glob of who knows what.
Hi Juliemybird,

Thanks for stopping by! Glad you enjoyed my descriptions and the story! :)
Giles Hash said…
That's kinda sad, but also funny :). I've never really liked bananas, either, because they're hard to peal without getting little strings all over them. And I gagged on one of those little strings once. I LOVE banana pudding, banana bread, and even banana ice-cream, though :D
Glad you liked it, Giles (love that name btw)! I love banana bread for sure. But, yeah, "banana strings" are gross. Especially the really wide, fat ones. And I hate that I feel like I have to wash my hands after I peel them.

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