The other day, I was driving down the road to the Krispy Kreme when I noticed a banana. Before you say anything—I know what you’re thinking. “Well, it was just a banana.” And that’s what the officer said too but you’re wrong! Dead wrong. This wasn’t one of those things where you notice a banana peeking out from the lifeless, dried grass along the road and you say to yourself, “Huh. A banana.” This was way different. This was the sort of banana you only see once or twice in a lifetime, the sort of vibrant, lively banana you see peeking out of a brand new Safeway paper bag that some schmuck, some SCHMUCK is carrying on the overpass across US-26. “It’s just a banana, even if it is peeking vibrantly,” you say. Don’t you? Isn’t that what you’re thinking? Well, you’re wrong again. I only got a short look at it, but I knew it was mine from the very start. Honestly.

I would have paid the guy for it, too, if he hadn’t freaked out and fallen. I would have forked over my life savings, not because I’m a stupid banana-loving nutcase, not because I’m a convicted banana offender, not even because I have no life savings and I wouldn’t know how to use a fork on them if I did. I would have done it because Officer Larry told me—he TOLD me—that risks are what make life worth living. But I can hear the seeds of dissension creeping into your voices, and they’re seedily saying, “Hmmm…. Banana Loving Nut Case and Banana Offender are good names for breakfast cereals.” Well, shut those seeds up. They’re just trying to distract you. The truth is, when you see a banana like this, a smooth banana that has extracted from Nature herself that perfect, glistening shade of Banana Yellow, you take risks. You’ve got to, because if you don’t, that banana will just slip away. I know! I’ve been there.

So sure, I think it was worth the guy’s life. Schmucks with Safeway bags are all over the place these days. They’re basically invading the country. Don’t you just want to ram into them at twice the speed limit whenever you see them? Well, I didn’t get the chance, because he fell right over the side of the overpass when I swerved. But when you hear some guy screaming phrases you just don’t want your fruit to hear (when he should really be praying) on his way down to meet a Stanley Steemer truck, you know why you want them all deported. Besides, as if to prove his schmuckdom, he dropped the bag! A schmuck and his banana are soon parted—that’s what my dad would have said if he spoke English well enough to say it without making other people think he was swearing about his life under the Taliban.

Anyway, I about wore my out parking brake trying to stop, but it turns out office buildings stop cars just as well. About a hundred feet down the road from the banana, stuck in my car, I got my French Army Knife out. Speaking of which, I have some advice for you guys: it’s easier to cut an airbag out of your way when your knife has blades. I tried to poke it with the fourth corkscrew but eventually I had to get it with my teeth. Wait, you’re muttering amongst yourselves again. I can just hear it. “Wouldn’t the pole of the flip-out white flag on the knife cut right through a flimsy airbag?” Well, I forgot, okay? And I had bananas on my mind, even though fate didn’t want us together—I tripped and fell on my way there and I blacked out. You might think it’s ironic, but like Officer Larry said, “A sprint isn’t a real sprint unless you trip and fall on the way. That’s why it’s called a sprint.” This was before Officer Larry went to rehab. But there must have been some truth in his hazy speech, ‘cause I know I was sprinting.

I blacked out. You know that Christmas poem with the sugar plums? I was like that, with bananas. Most people don’t have dreams when they black out, but I did. I can still remember them. Those were good dreams. And when I woke up, it was like when you’ve been hiking for a long time in the rain, and you finally get so wet you just take off all your clothes and hike in the buff, even if your dad sold all the family jewels, you know? If that confused you, I meant, you look up and there’s this really angry police officer staring at you. And you have to pay him some money and get your clothes back on.

So in three words, I didn’t get the banana. I mean, no banana for me. Okay, whatever, you get the point. But there’s a moral I think not even Officer Larry could have come up with. “If you don’t want to be a schmuck, stay on track and get a Krispy Kreme. If you do want to be a schmuck, well, go ahead, but for your own safety, keep your bananas out of sight.”