Today is Monday. I know today is Monday because I am tired, a little confused, baffled, disoriented and somewhat slightly dazed. Each Monday I begin, seemingly from scratch, my 40-hour work week while trying to punch my way through a temporary low-lying fog. It typically clears by about noon. I have a great day job with cool co-workers, so it is not a reflection on my grown-up job. It’s just how I roll. Yes. Today is Monday. I know it is Monday because my banana says so.
Each Sunday my wife ventures out to go grocery shopping. A non-gender-assigned chore, she does the shopping because I can’t. She has a shopping list. I never do. She always knows exactly what we need. I never do. She never shops when she’s starving. I always do and have come home with 9 roaster chickens but no milk. She knows precisely the type of food product you can get away with as a true ‘no-name’ score. I have no clue. Apparently no-name cheese is bad for some reason. She is frugal. I am cheap. So, she shops while I don’t. I’m not sure what I’m doing while she shops; probably nothing of any practical value. Yeah, that’s a safe bet for any gambler.
For most of the time our shelves are replenished for the start of the week. In the wooden bowl on the kitchen table — more fresh bananas. The bowl looks an awful like something a kid would have made while away at some summer camp shop class. It’s not though because I’m fairly certain my wife paid a hundred bucks for it. She’s shops for other stuff besides food, but that’s a whole other raw deal.
Each Monday my wife sends me off with a workweek’s worth of bananas. Singles. Not on a bunch. They are a ripe, high-visibility green, just on that tentative verge of turning an eatable yellow. These bananas come right off the various banana boats that queue up to dock and lock at our local harbour. My wife special orders the bananas five at a time sourced from a few different plantations operating out of the steamy, fertile forests of Ecuador, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Honduras. I don’t know why we need to wait for the banana boats to arrive as the local grocery store carries bananas, but my wife is a little obsessed with ‘fresh off the banana boat’ deliveries. Maybe they’re ‘no-name’.
Ironically, I don’t care much for bananas. To be honest, bananas have done very little for me historically. I’ve never been double crossed by a banana or anything like that, but still I wouldn’t say we’re close. Any food you need to work at to get at is a burden to me. Same with coconuts, lobsters and chestnuts. But my Monday thru Friday ration of bananas do come in handy as a weekly calendar. Each banana is assigned a day of the week, each with their own incomprehensible scrawlings and crude designs made with a black Sharpie. I don’t rightly know why my wife writes the days of the week on my bananas, but she does. ‘Wednesday’ is always HAPPY HUMP BANANA DAY. Monday’s banana is usually given the full design treatment, then even the most casual of observer cannot help but notice the blatant waning of effort as after HAPPY HUMP BANANA DAY, it all kind of goes down hill. Friday’s banana just says TGIF. What the hell is that? I’ll eat Monday’s, and possibly Tuesday’s but that’s about as much bananas I can tolerate in a workweek, but as calendars go, they come in handy. I just have to look at how many bananas I have left beside my Chuck Berry bobble head beside by pirate chest pen holder thing, and I know exactly what day of the workweek it is. My bananas take out all the guess work.
There is a traditional Gregorian calendar on the wall behind me – one of those massive whiteboard ones where someone is responsible for filling in all the boxes for a 4-month run, but it’s behind me. Why? Because that’s where the wall is, so structurally, it just makes perfect sense as opposed to asking them to move the wall to a location more convenient for me. I don’t wear a watch. I don’t have a desk calendar. Actually, there is one of those single-day flip-type things that look like a big fat 2”x2” pad, where it tells you the day and date with some type of daily affirmation or quote from someone quotable, but it’s parked on January 01 2010. It was a Thursday. I don’t know whose thing it is but it’s not very inspirational. Maybe I’ll chuck it out. Maybe Thursday. There is a little display on the bottom right of my monitor that indicates the year, day, and month, or year, month and day. It’s small and I always confuse the days and months when in numeral form. Pretty good with the year, however. The bananas I don’t eat collect and when the flies come my boss makes a banana loaf. It’s kind of a win-win. That’s usually once a month. Usually on a Monday.
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