Bananas About Bananas in (and out) of Quarantine

Just when you thought you’d seen it all, the Internet comes up with “National Banana Day.”

 No, that is not a euphemism. Get your mind out of the gutter. 

 Also, before anyone brings it up, there evidently is some confusion about whether we all should celebrate National Banana Day on April 15th or April 21st.

I say, “Who cares? We continue to Live and Love in The Time of Corona, and we can celebrate National Banana Day twice. No one knows what day it is anyway.”

National Banana Day shall hereafter be called “NBD,” not to be confused with “No Big Deal,” because, well, size doesn’t matter, and again, get your mind out of the gutter and bring mine with you.

Here in Medford, MA, we have been known to take “National Banana Day” a bit too far in that we have our very own Banana Cartel.

 Led by the Retta Smith, the Pablo Escobar of Bananas, the Banana Cartel operates out of the Mystic Community Market (MCM), the Food Bank of 02155. Their supplier? The Greater Boston Food Bank (GBFB), of course.

 GBFB provides an extraordinary amount of bananas to the Mystic Community Market, where Retta volunteers. And by “extraordinary amount,” I mean, “an absolute shit-ton.” Except if you eat that many bananas, you may never poop again.

 But I digress.

 When the MCM finds itself with an excess of bananas, the volunteers are encouraged to take them home and distribute them in the community. 

 That’s where the preferred entertainment channel of Judi 411, Everything is Free Medford (EIFM), comes in.

 EIFM is Medford’s “all free free-for-all” Facebook group where members offer up or seek free items. Over the years, we have borne witness to a veritable panoply of things up for grabs, from books and old New Yorker magazines to furniture, excess wrapping paper (seasonal or otherwise), condoms (unused; it’s not that kind of party), and a disturbing number of creepy dolls.

 But nothing compares to the offerings of food, which has led locals to refer to EIFM as short for “Everything Is Food Medford.”

 It started with someone offering a pizza that guests hadn’t devoured at a family birthday party and has become a proverbial runaway meal train ever since.

 Yes, I will get back to the bananas in just a moment. Be patient, grasshoppers, or should I say “little monkeys”?

 So, back at the food bank, Retta found herself with a boatload of bananas at the end of her shift, took them back to her humble abode, and posted on EIFM that she had no less than SIXTY bananas to give away to the community.

 Ironically, the day Retta posted about the bananas, I had discovered that we had none in our home. Yet, when I read Retta’s post, I had to ask what was, to me, the most pressing issue before all of us:

 “Excuse me, are you a math book editor? Because the last time I read a sentence the included ‘sixty bananas,’ it was in a word problem in the third grade!”

 Retta was kind enough to explain the story behind the story, but alas, I could not let the matter go. I would announce to The World At Large that there were bananas to be had and people better hurry. Retta then enabled me by messaging me with a preview post of how many bananas she had.

When Retta would post about a Banana Drop, the EIFM community would lose its ever-loving mind, and people would swarm Retta’s house, picking up bananas that she lovingly divided into bags of six.

 I made a pilgrimage to Banana Lourdes one afternoon but missed the last of the bananas.

Retta offered me delicious banana muffins, which were a worthy consolation prize. From what I observed on Facebook, Retta was not alone in making and baking banana treats, which led me to comment that at no other time in the course of human history would one community simultaneously experience an epic level of banana bread-making and constipation all at once.

I’d thought about running a betting pool to guess the number of bananas Retta would have on any given day, but:

1) I’m lazy and

2) I was afraid I would be encroaching on other aspects of Retta’s (newly found) life of crime and didn’t want to rock the (banana) boat.

 I want to say that my obsession was a byproduct of early quarantine, but we all know that’s a lame excuse. I would fixate on this topic if we were amid The Second Coming of Christ.

 And that, Dear Reader, is how it came to pass that The Universe enabled me to continue my One-Woman Crusade for the Banana Cartel. 

 At its peak, the Banana Cartel distributed 250 bananas in one afternoon from Retta’s porch.

 One year later, there are fewer Banana Cartel posts on EIFM, which leads me to believe that there is either an issue in the supply chain or Retta has taken the Cartel off the grid. 

All I know is yes, I have no bananas today. Again.

I’m calling my dealer.