Friday 8 December 2017

The Curious Case of the Cavendish Chew


I didn't really want to make another post about NiceMoustacheGuy, but I'm running out of material, and it's so close to the end of the year - 23 more blog posts to go!

I wasn't purposely trying to be creepy (I'm hanging up my deerstalker hat, remember?), but I happened to see NiceMoustacheGuy eat a banana. He took it out of the skin completely, and took a bite from one end, then a bite from the other. I didn't see what happened next (did I mention the part where I'm not trying to be creepy?).

The mystery was really getting to me. Other than when MrFodder showed me how monkeys peel bananas (pinch the other end, and the skin will split, allowing you to peel it easily), it has never occurred to me that you can eat a banana in a different way. Well, in my breakfast, I slice up the banana, but the way that I slice it up is pretty much how I would bite it. I really wanted to know what the thought process was behind eating a banana that way.

In typical Fodder fashion, I struggled to work out how the best way to ask him would be. If I asked him outright, he might think I like to watch him eat. Which I don't. Well, I don't hate it, but I don't go out of my way to do it. He also tends to be quite busy in the office... because, well, it's work. I feel like I don't know him well enough to bother him with small talk. So in the end, I sent him an email, putting "NOT urgent" in the title.

His response was that he he just eats it however he feels like eating it.

I didn't know that my entire being could become so deflated by a single sentence. I had a similar encounter with Michael, where he started doing something strange in the office. I had put together lots of theories, to try and explain the sudden change, and he shot them all down, saying they were incorrect. 6 months later, he stopped doing it, just as abruptly as he started doing it. Which just raised even more questions and theories, and he shot them down, too.

Despite the failure in solving the banana mystery, I thought it would be a good segue to solve the Michael mystery, so I told him about the banana thing, including NMG's response and how anti-climactic it was, and asked him for a resolution for his mystery.

His response: "I just woke up one day and felt like it."

If Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had written his stories with endings like this, he wouldn't have become nearly as successful as he did. Unfortunately, real life isn't nearly as exciting as fiction.

 MrFodder said maybe the ends of the banana were too ripe, so he ate them first so that he could enjoy the flavour of the rest of the banana without having to start and end with the taste of overripe banana. He also said that one of the differences between us is that he can see the simple explanation behind things and doesn't go looking for crazy theories.

I did have a few theories:

  • he had a bad experience with a banana once, where he started eating it the traditional way. He wasn't paying attention while eating it, and kept eating and eating and eating, and started biting into his hand. This is why he takes the entire banana out of the skin, because it's easier to tell when you've finished eating the entire thing.
  • he lived in a bad neighbourhood as a kid, and one of the best ways to smuggle drugs was to take a needle, and similar to how you fill an éclair, you first press a small baggie into the banana, and then you inject the drugs into the baggie, and finally seal it at the end with some latex. He always takes the entire banana out so he can check the skin for puncture marks. Then he takes a bite out of each end to check for the baggie, just in case he missed the puncture mark. You don't want to accidentally eat a drug banana - especially not in the office. Why do drug smugglers use bananas? Because the strong banana scent throws off the dogs, and it's not unusual to carry a banana around in your bag.
  • he takes a bite to make sure it's not a plantain. Then another to confirm. 
In more positive banana news, someone on my team gave me a couple of bananas (today's picture). He said that if I wanted, I could have them to make banana bread, otherwise they were going in the bin. I'm not a fan of wasting food, and banana bread is delicious, so that's my new weekend project. I couldn't help myself, I emailed NiceMoustacheGuy and asked if he had any banana bread eating tips. He didn't respond.

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