Hey girlie, yeah no, I’m talking to you! Yep! You know those two bananas sitting on the top of your school-issued mini fridge? The ones you stole from the Ratty two weeks ago? When your friend swiped you in and you “went grocery shopping,” meaning to fill a takeout container with veggies but instead ended up with an entire loaf of white bread and fifty servings of Cap’n Crunch?
Remember when you took those bananas because you wanted to eat them with the Cap’n Crunch? But then you didn’t have milk so you ended up eating all the little sugar pellets in one sitting while watching “Productive Day in My Life” YouTube videos to feel more like someone who would have milk? Yeah no, believe me, I get it!
But then those bananas were suddenly three days old and they were squishier? Like they had grown comfortable in your warm and dark Grad Center single with a window looking onto a vista of brick walls? And maybe you felt jealous of them? Because they could find comfort in the 175 square feet you tried, painstakingly, to make into a home? Like who told them this was their space, you know? What gave them the right to grow so comfortable here? Do they think they’re better than you? Because they know that this semester it just doesn’t quite feel like home because your friends are abroad and you’re taking this biology class that makes you feel stupid, and frankly, the only reason you took these motherfucking entitled bananas home with you was that you’ve been eating too much popcorn with nutritional yeast and salt and you’re worried about your blood pressure, but they CLEARLY are just making the problem WORSE so maybe you should just leave them here to think about what they’ve done?
Yeah? Those bananas? Where are they now? Oh, you can’t see them? Is it because they’ve grown so ripe they are the same color as your fridge (read: black)? Why are they still there? Because after day four they were too ripe for your tastes because, embarrassingly, you’re weirdly picky when it comes to fruit texture? And by day six you thought you’d just make some banana bread? And you don’t have a freezer that works properly because all you have is your school-issued mini fridge with a little box at the top that is sorta icy but the same temperature as your fridge so you left them out? To remind you to make banana bread?
But have you made the banana bread? Will you make the banana bread? Do you even have baking soda or eggs? Will you make the banana bread? No? Then why not throw those bananas away? And spare them the excruciating pain of a life too long lived? Are you afraid?
Do you see yourself in those bananas? Because time is moving so fast and you feel like suddenly your decisions hold much more weight than they ever had and you still don’t know what you’re doing this summer? Are you afraid that if the bananas are gone then that means you’ve run out of time?
But here’s the thing: they’re just bananas, right? And you’re just a junior still, right? And you’ve got time. And you’re not a banana (which arguably get much worse with age). But you’re not going to bake that bread this week. Or next. And waiting til reading period really isn’t fair to those bananas or your neighbors in Graduate Center. So throw those bananas away! You’re not going to make banana bread! There I said it! And it will be okay!