We take a break from our regularly scheduled ANXIETY AND TENSION to bring you this important message.

So, my mom and pops and The Kid were here this week.  Sometimes I call The Kid: Monster, Majesty, Buttface (sorry Mom), Loser, KID, Lame-o, or whatever else feels right at the time.  But that’s not the point of this post.  That was just bonus information.

My parents eat very specific foods for breakfast.  Plain yogurt, strawberries, All-bran buds, a sliced up banana, and mix it all together.  I have even seen my mom pour juice, or even MILK!!, into this strange mixture.  Usually I have to leave the room when it comes to breakfast mixture mash time due to my sensitivies.

It’s no secret that I hate bananas.

No secret at all.

I don’t like the way they look, the way they squish, the way you sometimes get banana string in your finger when you are trying to peel them (jibbly jibbly), and the way they smell.  And don’t get me started on people eating bananas in Sunday School, especially if they are sitting next to me.  That’s a good way to lose my friendship.

Also, bananas in the car are a terrible scourge.  The smell of bananas in the car reminds me of the time that we went on vacation to the East Coast, and Pops decided to clean the carpet with, like, industrial strength Woolite about ten minutes before we drove out of the driveway.  One of us kids (probably me) had spilled a ton of milk in the carpet, and Pops was trying to eliminate the rancid milk smell.  BUT, Internet, if you mix rancid milk with a ton of Woolite and don’t air the car out for about a week, it will cause brain damage to all of its passengers under the age of about 20.

That’s what’s wrong with all my siblings and I.

I believe Mom passed a banana or two around for snacks during the Woolite gassing.

I don’t even know how I got on the Woolite thing.  But to this day I don’t like Woolite because it smells like that trip, and I just don’t like bananas because I never have and I never will.

ALL THIS TO SAY: when I walked in the door this evening, Mom and The Kid had returned to the frozen tundra that is Iowa, but I could smell a banana was in my house still.

I searched everywhere.  Because I could smell it everywhere.

After quite a bit of searching around the entire house, I found a banana in my kitchen, but it wasn’t the one that I was smelling.  A few minutes later, I opened my kitchen trash can and – ta da! – there lay a banana peel, stinking to high heaven.

Quick as you can say “the kid is so cool”, I had that trash bag out of the can, tied up and sitting outside the front door where it won’t bother anyone except the neighbors.  (And I’m fine with that.)

If we ever have children, I hope none of them like bananas.  I don’t want to buy them weekly.