The banana

When I got home last night, Lorena, Kelly, and Christian were upstairs.  I was talking on the telephone with my friend and business partner, Ron Voorhees.  I came into the house talking on the cellphone and walked into the kitchen.  As I walked and talked, I noticed that there were two half bananas in plastic baggies sitting on the window sill above the sink.  That did not seem particularly unusual because Lorena never eats or drinks a whole …well anything.

We usually have three or four half full cans of soda open in the refrigerator with little plastic baggies over them.  I do not know why there are baggies on them because that certainly does not keep in the fizz, but there they are.  There are also half cookies, sandwiches, apples, and other food items in baggies in the refrigerator, on the kitchen counter, and in the cupboards.  The thing that the rest of us do not understand is why anyone would put the uneaten, used, drunk part of something in a baggy if there is no plan to ever come back and eat the other half later.  Think of it.  We always have three or four half full cans of of soda in the refrigerator.  I am grateful for her self-discipline.  There is no way I could ever just eat or drink half of anything.  Maybe three and a half of something, but never just a half.  I am sure that is why she is thin and I am portly.

So, it was not unusually to see a couple of half bananas, each in its own baggy, sitting on the window sill above the sink.  I opened one of the baggies and ate the half banana.  It was really quite good.  I thought nothing of it.  I was doing my part to avoid wasting food.  Then about four hours later, I am sitting at the computer desk working on the homeschool plan when I hear an anguished cry.

“Who ate my banana!?!!“

Kelly came stomping up the stairs and, with a fierce look on her face, accused me emphatically, “Dad, you ate my banana.”

I said, “Which banana?” but I really knew exactly which banana she was talking about.

“The banana on the window sill!”  Now she was almost crying.

“Oh, that banana.  Yes, I ate the banana.  Why?”

“That was the banana for my experiment.  It could have had iodine on it and you could be dead.  Now I have to start over.”

“Did it have iodine on it?”

“No, but that is not the point.  The experiment called for me to put yeast on it.”

“So I ate a banana that had yeast on it?  It tasted good.”

“No, you ate the control banana.  It did not have anything on it.”

I was relieved and, quite magnanimously, gave her a couple of extra days to do the experiment.  You would think she might be grateful, but I think she is still mad.  I do not know what she is mad about.  I am the one who could be dead.  After I apologized, we had a nice talk about how it would be nice to carefully label things as experiments if they are edible, in a baggy, and a dad with no self control around food is in the house.