Bananas Gone Bad...

They are the first solid food many of us eat and one of the last. Bananas. Such a fun word to type, fingers just mirroring micro-movements on the keyboard. Just the word itself sounds comforting, all repeating soft A’s and gentle consonants. Bananas are both sterile and wildly propagating, soft fruit protected in a tight jacket. Bananas are found in smoothies and pies, frozen in chocolate and (heavenly, yes) even a sauté. Did you know that a cluster of bananas in a tier is called a hand and the individual bananas are called fingers? Isn’t that even more endearing?

But sometimes good bananas go bad. The lifespan of the average banana on your kitchen counter may be, oh, two to four days from solidly yellow to mottled brown, but for some bananas of a more Type A nature, it is a much more brief shelf-life, and a much more ugly demise. They would prefer to burn out – or, rather, brown out – than to fade away. How many times have this happened: you give your banana a knowing little smile one night before you go to sleep – to dream of smoothies and custards and round or oblong (what is your preference?) slices on your morning porridge – and then you get that sinking feeling when you pick it up in the morning. It feels funny. It is browner than it should be and maybe one of its seams is unzipped a little. It is weepy and oily and sad inside. As you try to figure out what to do with it, the banana seems to decay by the second. Before long, it is fully committed to its decomposition cycle. Taps is playing in the background. The mood is somber.

So what do you do with a banana like this, inedible in its present state but being someone who is disinclined to waste? Some suggestions…

Twenty-five Uses For A Nasty Banana

1. Draw a sad face on it in Sharpie and mail it to Anthony Bourdain, Dick Cheney, the latest Fox News assclown who you can’t be bothered to learn the name of, or your favorite pick. Mail it fourth class. From Death Valley.

2. Puree it and use it as egg replacer posthaste! (One half large or one small banana blended until smooth equals one egg.)

3. Start a fruit fly colony. Study their complex and highly nuanced social behaviors. Name them. Become the Jane Goodall of fruit flies.

4. Prop the banana up and use it as a surrogate for an adversary in a debate. Bananas are famously slippery: stay on top of your game so that you are not trounced.

5. Take a picture with your cat or dog and the banana. Can you think of a good word balloon to accompany this? Something very cute? “I Can Has 'Nana?”

6. Dingdong ditch. (In other words, put it on someone’s doorstep, ring the doorbell and run.)

7. Stuff it in your pants just to see. Extra points if you then hug a friend.

8. Write a long and involved and adorably quirky story about this banana and its relevance to your life, list it on eBay and see what happens. Add cleverly crafted footnotes to ratchet things up a notch.

9. Stick some earth-toned soy wax candles in it for a raw foodist’s birthday party.

10. Begin your career as a prop comic.

11. Hone your still life painting skills. Quickly.

12. Take the banana on a last trip around the world, or at least down the block.

13. Start a write-in campaign for your banana to run for state senate. Platform ideas: hard on the outside, soft on the inside. Scratch that. Beloved by babies and senior alike? Neither very important voting blocks. How about this: Because everyone loves banana bread. It’s simple but golden.

14. Knit it a banana cozy to stave off further decomposition. Become the darling of the indie DIY crafters set with your useless but adorably retro creations.

15. Purchase some baby bananas for it to see if they make your banana feel younger. Warning: it could easily have the opposite effect.

16. Mash it up and invite your one friend with the baby over.

17. Stunt! Figure out some blog-endurance stunt featuring the banana and keep it going until you can’t see through the swarm of fruit flies or you have a book and movie deal. Ideas: dress it up as boyfriends from your past and create re-enactments with it and a peach [your surrogate]. Or travel with the banana back to its country of origin, fall in love with a swarthy, earthy stranger there who mocks your neurotic, complicated Western life and, in the process, find yourself. Eat banana pancakes along the way.

18. Bronze it.

19. Send in a video audition to The Real World, 2010. Play up the foreign bad boy angle.

20. Contemplate its banananess until you have reached a state of nirvana.

21. See if banana peels really make unsuspecting people slip, especially when two workers are carrying a long, clear piece of glass across the sidewalk.

22. Do bananas float? Find out. Do they burn? Find out. Do they splatter when dropped from great heights? You know what to do.

23. Pretend that you’ve mistaken your banana for a phone and talk into it to make your toddler laugh while making a funny face. This never stops being funny.

24. Watch an episode of The Banana Splits with it for old time’s sake, just the two of you all cozy. Order in Chinese food.

25. Accidentally leave it on the bus.

What are your ideas for downturn bananas?