There is a problem in this world, and it is only getting worse.
As I’ve documented here before, the grocery store keeps pushing green bananas on me and the entire buying public. I am convinced it is an intentional deception, a banana conspiracy of global proportions no doubt propagated by Big Fruit like Chiquita and Dole. They have congress in their deep pockets and own the USDA. It is time we open our eyes to the fact that they are shoving bad bananas down our gullible little gullets by redefining what “fruit” is. My conviction that we need a massive banana re-education campaign was strengthened by the dastardly events of Saturday afternoon. Let me explain.
I had finally made my way to the produce aisle of the grocery store (our local HEB, a rather large chain of stores in Texas) and was looking for fruit. There was lots of produce, but most of it was green, like the pineapple I bought. It will not be ripe for another three or four days now. I can get fresh onions, tomatoes and local produce at the farmer’s stands that are harvested when ripe and sent to to market but I can’t get pineapple locally grown, nor can I get what I really wanted: Bananas. I have to rely on the big grocer to get me my banana fix.
I saw the bunch of bananas that I wanted. They were almost perfect, which is hard to find. The peel had started browning with those tell tale blotches that signal the banana is reaching its peak flavor. I was almost to this bunch of bananas when an evil agent of Big Fruit, under the guises of a teenage employee of the produce department, reached his grubby paw in and snatched the very batch of bananas I wanted. In one fluid motion he tossed these bananas underneath his cart into a box that also had grapes and strawberries in it.
Me: “Did you cull those because you think they are rotten?”
Evil Agent: “Yes.”
Me: “Can I have those. They look perfect to me.”
EA: “They are rotten.”
Me: “I want those.”
EA: “Sorry, once they go into that box, I can’t take them back out. It is the rules.”
Me: “Surely you know that a banana that is perfectly yellow is still green and hasn’t reached its full flavor yet? It is only when a banana starts to brown that it is really ready, really ripe. Usually the browner the better. You’ve got to know this.”
EA: “This one is too ripe.”
Me; “Please give it to me, I will not tell anyone.”
EA: “No.”
It took everything in me not to assault him with a cantaloupe (a green cantaloupe, mind you) and take those bananas. He was such an arrogant little thing, the Produce Nazi, who, like a true bureaucrat, hides behind the ‘rules’ in order to avoid the painful process of thinking for himself.
Rise Up, banana lovers. Rise Up. Yes We Banana!
image from xoxomimi1.blogspot.com