Going Bananas - January, 2009

I believe that deep down we are all seeking perfection in something. The perfect date. The perfect mate. The perfect weather, the perfect haircut. Remember when Barbara Walters interviewed Monica Lewinsky and all people talked about afterwards was her perfect lipstick? There’s a nail salon near me called ”Perfection Nails.” All those things would be great. And as a perfectionist myself – typos in these essays notwithstanding – I am seeking something more: The perfect banana.

Now don’t start getting all Freudian on me, because this quest is about the fruit and nothing but the fruit, so help me God. And if you chose to read beyond this point, good for you, because this is an essay about the perfect banana. After all, bananas in concept are practically perfect. They contain potassium, which allegedly provides health benefits. If you get cramps in your legs, eat more bananas. They don’t have many calories, and they are neatly wrapped and portable, so you can grab one and go (I keep the plastic bags from the newspaper so I can toss in the peels). Just don’t abuse them in the transit mode or you’ll be that much further from perfection by adding bumps and bruises. You can eat them plain, sans any accoutrements, use them on cereal or as the centerpiece of a banana split.

I had a perfect banana once at a video shoot in Princeton. Even as I ate it, I knew. I knew it would be nearly impossible to find another banana so perfect. It was long and firm, perfectly shaped and completely devoid of brown spots. I want my banana ripe enough to be able to peel it without any trouble, but if it is too easy, it is probably too ripe. I don’t want the peel green, but if it has any number of brown spots, it’s not my kind of banana. That doesn’t mean it is bad or that I won’t eat it, just that it is not perfect. I’m not a banana bread person, so I’m not going to save brown bananas for that purpose. I don’t want to eat banana cream pie or banana bread or anything banana-flavored. Just the banana and nothing but the banana.

My quest for perfection takes me to the produce department of virtually any supermarket. Perfection might just be lurking at the end of the aisle, right? Wrong, if I seek it at Shop-Rite, otherwise known as the cultural center of my town (where your chances of running into someone you know increase exponentially depending on how bad you look that day). Shop-Rite serves up its bananas in plastic bags. The poor bananas, unable to breathe, break out into a warm sweat. As I liberate them from this plastic prison, in my mind I hear the song “Born Free” playing. When I announced I was retiring and people asked me what I planned to do with all that free time, I wanted to say that I planned to hang out in the produce section and free all the bananas from their slimy state. I believe that no good can come from the banana-plastic relationship.

Another reason NOT to buy bananas encased in plastic bags is that I live alone. I don’t want to buy a bunch of bananas, all in the same stage of banana life. I can’t eat that many, and the rest will rot. What I want – and what I get because I dare to defy the rules by opening the bags – is two green bananas and two ripe bananas. You can’t get two different-aged bananas in a single bunch, and from a slimy bunch, at that. Bagged bananas are far from my quest for perfection, so my search continues.

Stop and Shop is a better banana environment. The bananas there not only are born free, but they seem to roam freely through the store. You can find them in the produce aisle, on stands near the registers and the Nilla wafers and hanging in small bunches in various aisles in the store. The only problem there is quantity. If I only want two, sometimes I can’t hang the bunch back on the hook after making my selection. But I notice they seem to be less brown and more firm, key factors in my quest.

I don’t want to pursue perfection through every store, though I will feel triumphant if and when I find the perfect banana. I think it was what Bono had in mind when he and U2 wrote “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” If I find a perfect banana someday, somewhere, my life will have purpose. Of course, once I eat the perfect banana, the quest begins anew.