Banana Memories

The associations that populate our minds are wonderful things. To some degree they make us who we are. To what thoughts does your mind race as you contemplate this banana, I wonder?

Photo by Jason Gulledge

Perhaps some of your evoked associations may not be fit for public dissemination. Fair enough, your privacy should be respected.

Among my own associations I can bring forth the image of a little old lady. I can see her calmly sitting in her hospital bed in the rehab ward. She was afflicted with a lesion to one of her frontal lobes. Her potassium was running a bit low. One of my colleagues was speaking to her.

“Here have an extra banana, it will help boost your potassium levels”, he happily suggested.

The patient appeared nonplussed, her eyes fixed on the banana.

After a brief pause she reached out and took it in her spidery grasp.

Then she spoke to my smiling colleague.

“I’ll tell you what to do with this banana…”, her voice filled with unexpected vitriol, “take it over there, and stick it up your mate’s…”

Startled that the banana was now being directed at me, I failed to register the finer details of the intended location.

Fortunately, I never did find out.