The unaccompanied banana

Properly, a banana belongs to a bunch, curved fingers radiating from a common crown; separated from that crown by a checkout clerk's thumb or a shopper's impulse at the bin, what remains is technically a fragment rather than a specimen in its own right, though it is sold, eaten, and reviewed here as though whole. Weighed on a kitchen scale, it came to between 118 and 132 grams across four samples, none of them remarkable. The peel yellows unevenly once isolated, faster at the cut end where it was parted from its neighbors, a detail no one mentions in the produce aisle but which becomes obvious by the third day on the counter. Texture is unremarkable: starchy underripe, mealy overripe, correct only in a window of perhaps thirty-six hours that most households miss entirely. It requires no preparation, which some would call convenient; ease alone does not make a thing interesting, and it is under review here regardless. Eaten plain, standing at the counter, it tastes like a banana, which is to say adequately of itself and nothing more. Children are fond of it. Gym-goers speak of it with more enthusiasm than the fruit has strictly earned. It travels in its own container, which is its one genuine achievement, and bruises regardless, which is its one genuine flaw. Sought out alone, it disappoints; a bunch, at least, has the decency of company.

Doreen Fitch