The Banana Guard

I was going to write about last weekend's trip to Ottawa to celebrate a friend's birthday at the Nordic Spa. The sleeping arrangements were a bit tricky because there were four of us in a room with two queen-size beds and I don't like spooning with other women (not that there's anything wrong with that). So I brought a blow-up bed but by the time midnight rolled around we had consumed the mini-bar that K brought and I decided I didn't want to ask the valet to drive the car around to the front of the hotel so that I could pull the garbage bag containing my blow-up bed out of the back of the car and lug it up to the room. That meant we had to figure out who was going to sleep with who. T had told me on the way to pick up K that last week her husband woke up perched precariously on the edge of the bed because T has moved to the centre of the mattress and, with the cat, was occupying most of the space. He had to become a human bulldozer (or T-dozer in this case, which perches precariously on the edge of a pun so I can't resist) to get her back to her side of the bed, something she managed to sleep through. I decided that eliminated T as a potential bed partner. Then N said that she sleeps perched precariously on the edge of the bed and doesn't move at all, which sounded like the perfect match for T's bed-hogging shenanigans. So K and I ended up sleeping together. K asked me, just before turning off the light, if I move around a lot, because she's a light sleeper. I do. I also told her I talk in my sleep. Then I asked her what kind of sleeper she is. She replied that she flails her arms. I found that I was making such an effort not to move around and that I was so worried about getting my nose broken by a flailing arm that I couldn't sleep. Around 4 a.m. I whispered to K, not sure if she was awake or not, “Do you feel like you're back in the sauna?” because I was so hot, and she whispered back that she did, and I stumbled over to the thermostat to turn it down and tripped over someone's luggage and started giggling and then K started laughing and we couldn't stop for a while and T and N slept through it all.

I was going to write about that, but we had such a fruitful series of conversations at work today I want to write about them instead. They were all about the Banana Guard. There's a show in Canada called Dragons Den, where people pitch their ideas for a business and try to get one or more dragons (who are multi-millionaires) to invest in them. Three emergency room doctors were on last night's show. They had been on Dragons Den a few years ago trying to get the dragons to invest in the Banana Guard. The dragons didn't buy into the idea and now, a couple of years and 1.5 million dollars in sales later, the three doctors were back on the show pitching their new line of guards for different types of fruit. MM and D refuse to take the Banana Guard seriously and MM asked if they make a Banana Guard with the top cut off for Jewish banana lovers. H, on the other hand, became a Banana Guard convert after a friend gave her one for her birthday, and now she has a Pear Guard as well. She tried to convince MM and D that eating bruised and battered bananas is a really awful ordeal that no one need go through if one has the Banana Guard. I concur. Then G arrived and declared himself on MM's and D's side of the Banana Guard debate. How damaged can a banana get on the way to work? he scoffed. H replied that before she got the Banana Guard she used to transport her banana in her hand, that's how worried she was about it. I replied that having the Banana Guard had probably saved H's life, as someone could easily have mistaken the banana in her hand for a gun and shot her in self-defense. I proposed that we conduct a randomized controlled trial, where we would bring in 12 bananas and randomly assign 6 of them to be carried to work the next day in a Banana Guard and the other 6 to be carried au naturel, and then we would get two raters, both blind to the objectives of the experiment and the exposure status of the bananas, to determine which ones looked healthier. H, being a student, asked if we could use a smaller sample size as bananas are expensive. Then W arrived and, while refusing to take sides, demanded to know how exactly the Banana Guard can handle bananas of different shapes. What if they're straight? she asked. What if they're really curvy? What if they have an odd kink in them? H tried to explain that the Banana Guard can handle bananas of all shapes and sizes but W remained unconvinced. H then went into Google Calendar and scheduled a Banana Guard demo for next Thursday. MM spitefully declared that she is going to bring a plantain.

H and I have decided to give those three emergency room doctors some competition. We're going to go on Dragons Den and pitch the banana sling (similar to this, except it would contain a banana, not a baby or an alien impersonating a gigantic rodent), the banana belt holster and the banana ankle holster. Let us know if you have any other marketable ideas for a banana holder/protector.