Keep track of your bananas!

I have no sense of smell. This normally causes me no problem. I have smoke detectors in the apartment. I wear my clothes only once and then launder. I eat my food within a few days and don't worry it's gone bad. However today something happened that made me wish I either had a sense of smell or was younger and not becoming forgetful.

A while ago someone gave me a banana.

A long while ago.

Apparently I threw it in my canvas bag I tote back and forth to school each day. I put the bag in my bottom desk drawer at the beginning of the day and take it out at the end. My lunch is in a lined lunch bag in the fridge so I don't need to use my canvas bag for food transport. So today when I sat down to eat lunch I noticed fruit flies. "Hmmm, where are these flies coming from?" I wondered. The trash can was clear on the other side of the room. I knew I didn't have any other food with me aside from the good food I was eating. Oh well.

I got home today and I noticed a brown stain on the bottom of the bag. I opened it and took out the book I'm reading, the bible, my checkbook and my pad of paper, standard items for me at all times, and lo and behold at the bottom of the bag lay a gushy, moldy brown stain and a withered banana peel. The bag is currently being laundered, most of the things I listed above have been thrown out, and the bible I am trying to reconstitute with a wipe-down and a dry in the sun. Maybe having a sense of smell would be a good thing. Or maybe just having some sense. Do not throw bananas into your tote bag!

Harry Belafonte - "Banana Boat (Day O)" - 1956

PS: I don't think the bag is going to make it. I have laundered it and the mold won't come out. I poured bleach directly on it and am laundering it again. I suspect the bleach wash will do further damage. I mourn the trusty bag, one I'd bought in Canada on my last vacation in Maine 6 years ago...