A Peeling

 A few nights ago, it came to me in a flash: I could start to like bananas. 

I do not currently like bananas. I avoid them. I pick them out of my fruit salad. I politely decline them when they are offered to me. There is nothing about them, their taste their texture their consistency, that I like. This has been true as long as I can remember. I used to eat the Jello from around the sliced bits of banana my mother tried to sneak into me via "dessert." 

Bananas are at the crux of a group of foods that I would classify as "mushy." I prefer some resistance to my meals. I like to chew. I prefer my pasta al dente and I would like a little more cheese in my macaroni if you please. As a kid, I was suspicious of all food that was not hamburger. When my older brother started asking for Taco Bell, I would whine and moan until our fast food foraging included a stop at McDonald's as well. 

But if it came down to it, bananas or nothing, I was going to go hungry. 

Maybe I got hold of a bad jar of Gerber's banana paste when I was tiny. Or some now forgotten encounter with one of those brown, spotty, slimy messes more suited for baking than peeling and eating. 

Oh, and you can try and dress up your banana bread with chocolate chips and I will have a little piece to be polite, but only to be polite. It's banana bread. It's not chocolate chip bread. 

Which I understand at the ripe old age of sixty years is pretty peevish. I remember reading somewhere that Mick Jagger eats two bananas right before he goes onstage for that big potassium burst. I have an abiding respect for the design of the fruit, with its distinctive color and biodegradable package. There is a lot of great comedy that swirls around bananas, but I have not found a reason to change my ways. 

Until now. I sometimes eat Taco Bell now. I celebrated my birthday last year at a vegan Ethiopian restaurant. Somewhere that little voice in my head that is probably an echo from my late mother is saying, "Isn't it about time you got over this banana thing?"

Maybe it is. I have no current or specific plans to bring a bunch home for myself. It's more a matter of principle at this point. It might have to do with a scene from Escape From The Planet of the Apes, a movie I saw when I was nine. If a highly intelligent chimpanzee hates bananas, enough to teach me the synonyms "loathe and detest," maybe I'm onto something. 

Or maybe it's all in that very cramped space inside my head.