Is a Banana the Greatest Thing on Earth?

This little guy sure seems to think so. And it is hard to disagree. It might just be the perfect food item. Nutritious. Delicious. Slightly surreptitious.

Think about everything this fruit offers...

It comes prepackaged. I mean, it effectively comes off the tree already in a Tupperware container—protected by this natural safeguard from the cruel throes of nature, nurture, and supermarket stock workers. When ready to eat, you simply remove the packaging and discard it.

That packaging is biodegradable. A banana peel is a remarkable thing. Engineers have been slaving over their micropipettes, trying to figure out how to do duplicate it. The best they can come with is some cheap, vociferous paper bag, which I haven’t stared at long enough to trust that it is actually biodegradable. The banana, on the contrary, has had a beat on this since before Jesus gave his first sermon on carbon emissions. You can just drop a banana peel in the middle of Central Park, and feel good about yourself because you are making the world a better place.

It has a ripeness indicator. Unlike meat products and other devious food items, a banana makes it abundantly clear what stage of ripeness it is in. There is a refined, green-to-black chromatic gradient that seems like it exists for the sole purpose of giving you the perfect indication of whether or not it is right to eat.

It has a built in handle. This makes it the ideal food item to eat on the go. I have a friend who refuses to eat bananas while stationary. He thinks it is some sort of injustice to their inherent nature as a "mobile fruit".

You can split it cleanly in half without a tool. Don't believe me? Just take a look at young Marky here. The perfect snack to share with a loved one. You sure can’t do this with an apple. Or a sirloin steak. Maybe corn on the cob, but then that shit gets all up in your teeth.

It is EXCELLENT with peanut butter. As are most things, but especially bananas. As a personal aside, I actually find a banana really difficult to eat without peanut butter. It’s just mush, and I am never sure when to swallow. No matter how long I chew, the consistency never changes. Which is just the definition of consistency, I guess. But this makes it really hard to decide when it is ready to be sent down the hatch. I once chewed on a bite of banana for 11 days, because I couldn’t figure out the right time to swallow.

With all that is going on in this world, I just want to say thank you to bananas, for assuring me that God really does exist.