The adventures of Colin, a bannana

Colin was a banana. Most people reading that would think “oh how cute” but Colin was not the kind of cartoon banana we have heard of. He couldn’t talk didn’t have any other fruit friends, and he certainly couldn’t play bridge.

Colin was, however, a very special banana. He was the first banana in history (to his knowledge) to be self aware. So he was well aware that he was in constant danger of being eaten. Thankfully for him, time passes much more slowly for bananas than for people. So most bananas lead a long and happy life before being scoffed.

Colin didn’t want to be scoffed so he decided to go on his own little adventure. One day (it was a Saturday) he climbed out of the fruit bowl and landed on the table top. He rolled himself to the edge of the shiny table and looked down onto the vast green expanse of furry pasture below. He wondered if dropping off the side would hurt. He was looking down, trying to recall the fates of the other bananas on his tree who fell. He was leaning further and further over. He didn’t realise that being a fundamentally bent object meant that balancing one’s self was very difficult. Inevitably he leaned just too far, toppled and fell to the ground.

“So” he thought to himself “falling doesn’t hurt after all”. He didn’t ever notice the brown spot slowly appearing on his rear.

He looked around this new landscape, it was furry and fluffy like giant green candyfloss. Far in the distance he could see a blue mountain crested with white and a giant brown cliff, with a dark cave at the very bottom. The cave was almost as large as the cliff. He then saw that the whole place was surrounded by cliffs except on one side where there was a giant gap into another world (you and I would call this a door, and we would call the other world a kitchen).

Colin decided to make a trek to this new world, on the way he saw many wondrous sights, including the now legendary Equal Rights for Ants march and the less well remembered Equal Rites for Carpet Dwelling Semi-Fictional, Mystical Characters protest. But these will have to form part of another story.

Eventually he got to the entrance to the new land. It was a giant desert; the ground was gently undulating stone. He didn’t like the look of the middle of the desert so he kept to the cliffs and followed them towards the middle of the kitchen.

After some time he realised he was coming close to a huge hairy monster. It was making a deep rumbling sound and Colin realised that it must be asleep. Colin edged closer for a better look. He noticed that the monster had a giant collar around its neck and attached to the collar was a large silver disc with strange markings etched on it.
If he could read, he would have known that the etchings said

“This is my Dog Dozer, if found call Eric on “147889”

But bananas can’t read, so he was none the wiser.

It was then that he heard a most curious noise. It was something like

“aaaaarrrrrrrrggggghhhhhh mmmmmmmyyyyyyyyyy hhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeedddddddddd”

He knew what it was. It was Eric, the giant making one of his noises. Now the fact that Colin had ears to hear, but no mouth to speak might have seemed a little strange to him, but he didn’t notice (you can’t make this stuff up you know).

Colin had seen Eric a number of times and heard several of his strange noises such as “wwwwhhhheeeeeeerrrrrrrrreeeee mmmmmmyyyyyyyyyyyyyy ddddddaaaaamammmmn keeeeeeeeeeeesssssssss?????” so this wasn’t a shock for him, but he wished he knew what the noises meant.

After a long time of large thunderous bangings Eric appeared in the distance, heading towards the desert.

Colin was now stuck between trying to pass the monster, going back to the other land or trying the new world that Eric was approaching from. All of the options seemed pretty scary and Colin wondered whether he had made a mistake ever leaving his bowl.

Colin decided that he would try and plead with Eric for his life. As Eric approached he tried to cry out “please Eric, don’t eat me”. But as he did this he realised that Eric could not understand banana language and, in any case he, Colin, had no way of speaking out loud.

Slowly reality dawned on him; Eric was coming close, his big foot slowly advancing, ready to step on Colin’s yellow head. Suddenly Dozer the dog barked from behind Colin (presumably as a warning to Eric that he was about to step on a banana, but Eric couldn’t understand dog and just ignored it).

Colin jumped at the sudden large noise, in fact he jumped so hard he literally jumped out of his skin. He landed near one of the cliffs, but left his skin behind. He watched in horror as Colin’s foot continued its downward descent to his discarded skin.

Panic set in, being only a banana, Colin had not been programmed with fight or flight instincts so he stayed there, motionless frozen to the spot as the big foot slowly landed and squashed his beautiful yellow flesh.

As Eric stepped down he noticed the floor wasn’t quite right. His right foot started to slowly slide forward. There was nothing he could do. The fall took him, he crashed backwards onto the hard kitchen floor, jarring his back as he did so.

Eric stayed motionless for a few seconds, checking he was still alive. He was but he realised the pain in his back was too severe to move. He decided that all he could do was wait for someone to come find him. After a while he drifted off to sleep. When he awoke some hours later he was still unable to move without severe pain. But he was hungry, as he looked around he saw a neatly peeled banana on the floor nearby. He finally put two and two together and concluded he had unpeeled the banana whilst drunk last night and forgotten to eat it. He reached over to Colin picked him up and ate him in three mouthfuls.

Little is documented of Colin’s response to this, but it is believed his last thing to go through his head was the words “oh bugger”

There is no moral for this story. But if you really want one, then the moral of the story is:
Be careful of self aware bananas, because you’re always just a few steps away from generic slapstick “comedy”.