BANANAS ARE MAD

Banana Bread Day — a Loser’s Lament

Destiny can be cruel in the world of pastries and poetics

What’s that? Happy Banana Bread Day? Yeah, right. Do I look happy? Do I feel loved? Or do I feel like spouting a load of rhetorical questions till you guys finally get the message that I am severely pissed off with my lot in life?

‘Lot in life’. Get that. I’m doing it myself now. Bloody alliteration. Bane of my existence. Why did I have to get stuck with ‘bread’? Who gets excited about ‘bread’?

‘Bread,’ as Ms Pfeiffer would dismissively say, before shoving it to the side of her plate, ‘is parsley’. And she knew her bakers, know what I’m saying? Boys, brothers, bums… You guys just can’t get past that whole tippy-tappy, see-saw alliteration thing, can you?

So I get lumped with ‘bread’. Sure, I get my own day. Which means what? The only place I’m seeing any action today is in elementary schools. All those do-gooder teachers baking bloody banana bread with their classes, because it sounds so wholesome and healthy and frankly five-a-fricking-day fantastic.

What do the kids learn?

That I’m dull. That I’m what grown-ups make you eat instead of the proper sweet stuff. You can see the seeds, goddammit! What kind of a cake has seeds? Maybe that’s why the kids chuck me in the bin as soon as teacher isn’t looking. They think it’s a plant pot and I’m going to sprout into a tree or something.

You know what day it was on the third? Carrot Cake Day, that’s what. Maybe you had yourself a carrot cake, with all that fancy frosting and the cute little sugary carrot decorations on top. Everyone loves a carrot cake, huh?

Carrots! For real? That’s not even a fruit. It’s a school lunch torture implement. If anything deserves to get shoved to the side of the plate with the parsley it’s carrots! But no, old carrot lucked out with its alphabetti spaghetti, didn’t it? Bagged itself a ‘c’ for ‘cake’.

Ooh, cake! We like cake! Not like that boring, old, wholesome bread with all the seeds in it. Yuck!

It makes me sick. The unfairness of it. I’m a standing joke — they won’t even let me in the Premier Pastries Party.

‘Name?’ they ask. ‘Banana.’ ‘Surname?’ ‘Brdgvbg,’ I mumble. ‘Sorry, could you speak up? I didn’t quite catch that.’ ‘Bread. There — I said it! B-R-E-A-D!’ ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I thought maybe you were ‘Split’, or ‘Fritter’, or — you know? — something vaguely palatable… No, sorry. Your name’s not down — you can’t come in.’

Ejected like some kind of emetic éclair. On my own day!

I’m not even going to bother next year. I can’t face the indignity. Passed over for a carrot cake. What’s next? Spinach sponge? Zucchini zabaglione?

You know what I’m gonna do? Rebrand. ‘Banana Brioche’. How does that sound? Sophisticated enough for ya? Or maybe ‘Plantain Pie’ — do a number on old Pumpkin and steal pride of place on the Thanksgiving table.

Maybe I’ll even smuggle some ‘parsley’ in the recipe as well. You schmucks will swallow anything so long as you get that fix of nursery rhyme alliteration for your feeble little minds.

Enjoy that slice of carrot cake with your long latte, you lookalike letter lovers. You don’t know what you’re missing.

I coulda been a contender. Instead of a banana bread bum, which is what I am.

February 23rd really is National Banana Bread Day. Be bold — bake a batch!

If you found that funny, on your way back from getting your head examined, you may want to peruse this stuff as well: