the one with all the bananas
Taking time out of a very important twitter argument to write this so listen here
As a Jewish Russian Latvian I have granted myself the authority to speak about basically anything. Though maybe I can’t, since as an atheist Jew, a “foreign” Russian, and a Russian speaking Latvian national I’m really not at home with any of my people; I’m the kid at a party who’s just on his phone the whole time. (Maybe that’s why I chose Julz, the kid at a party who’s on his phone the whole time.)
I want to talk to you about the great banana plague. I tried googling a recipe for a “great banana bread” but google thought I might be in the mood for a “great banana plague” instead. It was right. So today’s story is sponsored by the google predictions.
I clicked, dived in, then out, and was shook that I never heard of this before. Maybe you already have. Julz did hear of this before, which made me feel a lot less special. (He probably read about it while at a party, whatever.)
The TLDR of the great banana plague is that once upon the 50’s the Panama disease wiped out Big Mike, or more accurately Gros Michel, which was our ancestral banana of choice. Big Mike had the X factor. It was perfect for cultivation, transportation, and consumption.
The only problem was that every Big Mike had the X factor. (And that’s how Simon Cowell killed the banana’s heart song. Kidding --- they all died.) Gros Michel bananas were all the same, which made a highly contagious disease really quite dangerous, since ALL bananas died from it equally. Very progressive, considering this happened in the 50’s.
Instead of learning nature’s lessons about equality, people decided to keep the racism but switch up the bananas, and use the Cavendish instead. Cavendish turned out to have enough of an X factor to be easily cultivated, transported, and consumed, but not so much as to make it susceptible to the Panama disease. According to the Wikipedia it has the X factor and then some, since one of it’s official uses is as a visual aid in sexual education classes. It’s right there in the article under “Uses”. That’s something that Big Mike, despite his name, can’t boast about.
This story has been living in my mind for about a year now. While surviving our own people related plague, we collectively baked an amount of banana bread per person that is likely beyond the legal definition of sane. We’re all kinds of people out there, yet somehow Covid left a great big mess pretty much everywhere. Jews, Russians, and Latvians, all faced the reality of a global pandemic.
Apples, oranges… at the end of the day, we’re all bananas.
The problem is that we’re all so fucking special it’s almost impossible to accept. Equal is more important than different. Has to be.
P.S. I also have bad news for you all. It’s actually not news, this has been going on for a while. There’s a new race of the Panama disease that the sexy Cavendish is not resistant to.
“Hey guys, remember how we nearly faced extinction because we relied too much on one type of banana for global distribution? Going forward, let’s continue growing only one type of banana for global distribution.” Banana industry; 1950s.
P.P.S: Julz: “Great! Global pandemic, nuclear war,.. now all the bananas are gone?!”