Don’t Puke in the Banana Suit

Don’t Puke in the Banana Suit
By David Glenn Cox

What could I possibly mean with that title, Don’t Puke in the Banana Suit? Well, years ago I had a friend named Chris and we hung around together in a crowd of guys. Some of us who worked together and some of us were friends of friends and we partied and watched College football games together.

One weekend Chris announced that he had gotten a part time job in advertising, on the weekends he would be wearing a costume and encouraging customers to come into the stores. Well Chris stayed late and partied hardy but managed to show up on time for the job. He was to wear a fiberglass banana suit with yellow leggings and dance in front of a frozen yogurt shop.

If you’re from the Deep South you know already, it gets hot in the Deep South. In Montgomery Alabama it’s almost always hot, in March it’s hot but September in Montgomery is like July in New York or Chicago. Chris managed to dance for about an hour or so before the heat and humidity combined with a night of partying caught up with him and he puked in the banana suit.

Chris was our friend so we sympathized with his plight and we ripped on him unmercifully about it. The visual of a heaving banana in front of a frozen yogurt shop was just too much. He was fired as a dancing banana his career was ruined for he had broken the cardinal rule of dancing bananas. Apparently when the Moses of dancing bananas came down off the mountain top with the ten commandments of dancing bananadom don’t puke in the banana suit was number one.

Chris wasn’t too upset that his career in the realm of dancing fruit had been cut short after all what’s the best it could lead to but Fruit of the Loom ads. He took our ribbing with good humor and it became a running joke. Anytime one of us would screw up at anything the comment would eventually be made, man he puked in his banana suit. If we were trying to pick up a girl or fix a car unsuccessfully, puked in the banana suit. It even became an admonition, careful don’t puke in your banana suit!

Chris was our friend and his experience as dancing fruit had been a hot and miserable one. But to the owner of the yogurt shop to have paid good money for advertisement and to attract new customers into his business the specter of a retching banana out front calling Ralph and Huey instead of customers was a fiasco. Likewise for the owner of the banana suit, a customer totally dissatisfied with the entire produce entertainment industry and a banana suit that smelled of puke.
Even today twenty-five years later when I see one of those guys asking if you’ve puked in your banana suit will bring a smile. The course of the world had not been significantly altered the frozen yogurt shop still stands and the demise of the dancing fruit industry cannot be blamed on Chris alone. It’s still funny though, “Mommy what’s wrong with that banana?

So when during the course of life when I see a fiasco that has gone terribly awry I think to myself, well, you know. The higher we rise in life the more prudent we are expected to become. The less likely we are to become overheated and toss our cookies because we are older and wise enough not to party half the night before we climb into our alias as member of the fruit guild.

We find ourselves as a nation in a harrowing situation, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and threatening still more. Soon four thousand will be admitted killed with tens of thousands more wounded. Syria, Lebanon and Pakistan destabilized and an entire region that could erupt into a world war and apparently our own dancing fruit bowl hasn’t given it a thought as the cost to the taxpayer approaches one trillion dollars.

Health care for children? The dancing banana says we can’t afford it! Global warming? The dancing banana says we should let each country deal with their own green house gasses or in other words let’s do nothing and I’ll keep dancing. In our own country millions will lose their homes to foreclosure, wages for working people are stagnant. Wal-Mart is cutting prices on their twelve most popular items before the Christmas season even begins. The dollar at a forty year record low as foreign interests snatch up American stocks at fire sale prices.

Chris didn’t have to tell us, he could have said he just quit. He could have made up a story but instead he told us the truth. He was willing to admit he made a mistake that he had screwed up and puked in the banana suit. He knew we would pick on him and tease him about it and we did but Chris had more character and honesty at twenty than the President has at sixty. The strength of character to tell us the truth despite his own personal embarrassment and not to blame others for his own failings.

Enough character to admit he puked in the banana suit.