Pinch the bottom.

This isn't really news. There are videos about this out there, various posts scattered about the internet -- it's probably on Lifehacker somewhere. And beyond that, chimps have been doing it for millennia.

It's not unlikely that you've heard of this before. I don't go around preaching my banana doctrines, but on the occasion that the proper way to peel a banana has come up I've heard people give several reasons for not following the example set by the broader majority of primates on this planet.

Mostly people are adverse to changing routine. They feel the effort required to modify a habit is greater than the inconvenience of a few stubborn stems. I ask them, "Doesn't it bother you when the stem is really resilient and you end up bruising the whole top half of the banana by squeezing it too tight while you wrench and twist it off?" And it seems most people don't care. But they haven't practiced this greater form of banana undressing. They don't know how difficult it is to find a banana it will not work on. In fact, I have nothing to prove that it isn't impossible to find such a banana.

I've even heard someone explain to me that they do not do this specifically because they don't like the dark mushy nub that is found at the very bottom of a banana. This mystified me. I entirely agree, I hate that mushy nub. But that nub is precisely why I adore this method. I have a philosophy that is very specific to food that I eat, and it goes like this: Deal with the worst part of the meal immediately and leave the best bite for last. When I peel a banana the first thing I do is pinch off that nub and toss it. Then I have the whole rest of the banana to enjoy and I don't have to worry about it!

Anyway, I just thought I'd drop some, perhaps allegorical, life advice for you here. Why waste any time you don't have to, expend any energy that is unnecessary?

The monkeys know best.

 

 

Edit 1/13/18: I remembered, just now, that someone asked me which end of a banana was the bottom (it was long ago and I forget who, exactly). I thought that was a silly question at the time. You think about the way you would hang them, and that's the top. It was several weeks later that I realized I do know how banana trees operate, but in this case, nature is wrong. Bananas grow upside down and that's just how it is.

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