Have you heard about the Savanna Bananas? Of course, you have. They are the comedy baseball team that barnstorm from stadium to stadium, dressed in yellow uniforms, entertaining people who are willing to pay good money for a cheap laugh. Heck, you can stay home and watch the current Red Sox do that.
Truth be told, these aficionados of “Banana Ball” (who follow the footsteps of the great Max Patkin – look him up) whose crazy antics occur while professing to play the national pastime, are funny. But this column is not about them.
I just thought mentioning them would catch your attention. In writing parlance, that is called the “hook.” No, this essay is not about dancing infielders and gymnastic outfielders. It is about real bananas, the eating kind.
I have a pretty good relationship with the yellow berry. (Yes, they are berries, like grapes, oranges and eggplants, but don’t ask me to explain, the science is way over my head.) Thirteen years ago, I had a serious operation after which a specialty nurse advised me to eat two bananas and two marshmallows every day. I should mention that I have always hated bananas, but I am inclined to do what I am told when lying prone in Intensive Care.
The nurse was very smart. The banana diet helped to put my ailment into remission. The marshmallows not so much. Many pounds of body weight later, I found out she meant marshmallow root, an anti-inflammatory, not the sugary confection. I still eat bananas every day, but not marshmallows.
You will be glad to know that a bunch of bananas is called a “hand,” and one banana is a “finger” (don’t go there), or that they are slightly radioactive? Bananas can float, which may be why you never hear of a banana boat sinking. Just sayin’.
Over 100,000,000,000 bananas are eaten across the globe every year. You can use a banana peel to polish your leather shoes or rub one on your forehead to cure a headache. Gross! I’d recommend rubbing a marshmallow instead. I am proud to say my Portuguese ancestors introduced bananas from Africa to America in the 16th century. I don’t recall Grandma cooking up a batch of banana-and-kale soup.
Sadly, bananas are on the verge of an “apocalypse,” so says Li-Jun Ma, a University of Massachusetts Amherst biology professor. The Cavendish bananas we eat today suffer from the same devastating fungus that wiped out the variety my mother forced me to eat in the 1950s. Overplanting has caused the wilt to re-emerge. Luckily, there are 1,000 different varieties of bananas.
Thank goodness because someday soon you may be wearing banana clothing just like the Savanna Bananas. It’s true. Scientists in Pakistan predict that soon they will be able to turn banana waste into textiles and provide clean energy as a bonus. Why Pakistan? Because banana farms there produce over 80,000,000 tons of waste! And the peels can produce enough electricity to supply half of the country. That’s pretty a-peeling.
Imagine if I had saved all of my 9,490 banana peels over those 13 years … never mind.
Thoughts on…
By Dick Morgado