Bananas
Lots of people are of the mistaken opinion that I am a chilled, laid-back and accepting kind of person. This is completely and utterly not true, and here is the proof.
I recently had to take a 40-minute journey on the tube. This did not bother me. Although the tube is not the most pleasant place to pass time, it is a good opportunity to immerse oneself in ‘a good book’.
So I settled down and all was well for a while. Well, until precisely the next stop where a man, a deceptively ordinary-looking man, got on and sat opposite me. He had an old supermarket bag which he placed on his lap. This should have warned me – ever since I witnessed a seatside fight between a cinema-goer and a rustler at the National Film Theatre, I have been weary of men and plastic supermarket bags.
But I digress. This supermarket bag was full of bananas. And the man proceeded to take one out, peel it and eat it, all the time gazing straight ahead into the middle distance behind me. This was fine. He wasn’t staring at me. And he was after all, just a man eating a banana.
Then he ate another. It was at this point that I noticed his Keith from Nuts in May eating style – that kind of slow, methodical, thoughtful chewing where you just know that he is carefully counting the correct number of chews in his head. And still he stared straight-ahead at that mysterious point just behind my right ear.
By the third banana, my skin was beginning to creep and by the fourth, all attempts to concentrate on my book were drowned out by an intense desire to shove it down his throat and choke him with it.
I didn’t wait around to see the fifth banana. As he pulled it from his bag, I leaped to the door and defiantly turned my back on him and his stupid, bloody bananas.
Later, I told my sorry tale to a friend. ‘But’ she said reasonably ‘he was just eating bananas. What’s wrong with that?’. ‘It was the way he was eating them’ I explained. ‘I thought that you Australians were meant to be laid-back.’ was her puzzled, yet completely irritating reply.
She is lucky that I didn’t have a banana on me as I know where I would have placed it.
Tags: whimsy
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:05 pm
Ooh, no, that would have done it for me too. Bet he was filming you while he did it. Check YouTube carefully. Look under ‘Banana Man’.
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:20 pm
You really don’t need to make me any more paranoid than what I already am, ISBW.
February 4th, 2010 at 11:59 am
I was on the bus recently and a slightly grand and slightly obnoxious African guy was berating a fellow black guy about eating on the bus, saying how he only ever ate at home (not that he did any cooking he proudly proclaimed) he was a bit of ar*e but I’m increasingly coming around to his view. This banana man was clearly dodgy (and his GI sugar levels will probably kill him) but having been trapped on a train with a snooty woman’s sesame noodles recently a “no food on the go rule” looks good to me.
February 4th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
I hate affection eaters – heavy on the theatrics over a few scoops of food. Crunchers are worse than munchers. Brickies with a can of Fosters/Stella and a bag of McCoys on the C 2 C line (way home, not way in) make a right poppy show of eating crisps
February 4th, 2010 at 4:48 pm
whoops – meant affectation!
February 4th, 2010 at 9:11 pm
I’ve long a secret yearning to ban eating on trains, BTLP. Yours and Mondo’s story suggest that we’re right. At least the banana’s were quiet and non-smelly – loud crisp crunchers, smelly food and all citrus fruits should be banned, banned, banned.
Is that common then, Mondo, commuters tucking into the Stella on the way home?! I rarely see boozers (or eaters) on the train around 5-7pm, but after 9pm it’s a different story.
February 5th, 2010 at 11:28 am
I don’t see it so much now – but I’m getting later trains. It was when I’d catch the four o clock flyer that it was populated by brickies, boozing and burping it up..
February 5th, 2010 at 12:23 pm
One banana at a time is enough for me, or was, not sure I can even face one now. I don’t mind food on the go in general, but would prefer it was restricted. Buffet cars may be on the way out, but perhaps we could put eating carriages next to the quiet ones…
February 5th, 2010 at 5:06 pm
That’s it Simon! Eating carriages! All the worlds problems can be solved via the blog can’t they?
February 5th, 2010 at 7:14 pm
Never mind about the etiquette, he’s lucky he didn’t give himself potassium poisoning (or maybe he did – there’s some comfort for you at least). You’re not really supposed to eat that many bananas in one short spell.
http://chemistry.about.com/b/2009/02/19/how-many-bananas-does-it-take-to-poison-you.htm
He’s heading for an early grave, I tell you.
February 5th, 2010 at 8:10 pm
Oh my god that’s just plain WEIRD!! (I think Mr Mondo was right the first time – maybe it’s a banana affection!) I think seeing a man tuck into five bananas one after the other before my very eyes would have me off that train immediately!
February 5th, 2010 at 8:52 pm
Well, 23Daves, I did not know that. This gives me a different approach to the whole experience. Maybe the deathless stare and the relentless banana eating were nothing more than a silent cry for help? There are worse ways to die I suppose.
Hello Mrs Mondo and welcome! Yes, it was a feat to behold, especially since he ate them so methodically and at a rate of about one banana every five minutes I estimate. Although creepy, this is nothing apparently. According to 23Daves’s recommended site above, 7 bananas is a good number to eat – this takes you right to the very edge of danger. Oh, boy…
February 5th, 2010 at 11:38 pm
How freaky!! Love the description tho! Can just picture him stuffing one banana after another with a gormless look on his face!!!
Depending on what sort of bananas they were this could have had me gagging tho! I don’t mind slightly green firm bananas, but older, black spotted, mushy bananas are awful! And the older they get the worse they smell too. yuk! Someone I sit near at work manages to eat a manky banana every day, then somehow the bloody skin gets thrown in MY BIN!!! I get this awful waft of manky nana whipping up.
So what state were this blokes bananas in??!!
P
February 6th, 2010 at 7:10 pm
I am completely with you Piley. I’m a fan of the firm, crisp yellow banana too, but the minute it turns.. my stomach turns with it. I don’t like hot banana or banana cakes either. Fuss fuss.
Anyway, the banana-lovers bananas were of the decent, firm, non-bruised, non-mushy variety. If they had been any other, I would have been off the train after the 2nd one!
February 17th, 2010 at 8:15 pm
As a banana is significantly softer than a handful of nuts and liable to slip down quite naturally after only 30 or so chews, I hope the man used his discretion…
Big fan of Nuts In May. Not a big fan of banana-bothering tube-dwellers. I do like 23 Daves theory that it may have been a very precise, extraordinarily patient suicide bid.
Alternatively, since too much potassium can lead to cardiac arrest, perhaps he’s hoping to build up an immunity by slowly increasing his banana intake, thus reducing his chances of a fatal heart attack and, by logical progression, attaining eternal life.
Or he may just have been ‘a bit weird’.
February 17th, 2010 at 10:06 pm
Hello Dan and welcome, I’m loving your speculation here about the banana eater and his perhaps more sensible plan to build up immunity. Overall, it seems to me that there are two alternatives here:
1. the bananas were a means to an end, either literally, or as you suggest, eternal life.
2. he likes bananas. A lot.
You will also be pleased to know that he didn’t quite reach Keith of Nuts in May’s level of chewing.