While gathering materials for my previous post, my kids and I made a really important discovery: conjoined bananas. We had been going through all the bananas at the supermarket trying to find just the right ones for our tattoos.  A nearby employee was stocking fruit, and I couldn’t help but notice that he looked like he was having a miserable day. The sight of my daughter and I rifling through the neatly stocked bananas clearly irritated him further, so I made an effort to stay out of his way.

When we discovered the conjoined bananas, the disgruntled employee overheard our oooh’s and ahhh’s and came right over to see what all the fuss was about. He immediately perked right up. Like us, he’d never seen a such a thing in real life before. Surprising, actually, since he works around fruit all day.

We were pondering whether it would be two separate bananas on the inside, when he said, “Maybe we should open it up to find out,” to which I responded, “Yeah, man, go for it dude!” It wasn’t. It looked pretty much the same on the inside, which didn’t really matter because it was just so just exciting to see him open that sucker. Once peeled, he didn’t know what to do with it, so he offered it to us for free, and my banana-loving son happily ate it all before we were out of the produce section.

The employee ended up being a real nice guy, and I’m glad I was there for what was surely the highlight of his shift. After that, we didn’t have much else to say to each other, so my kids and I went on our way. It was an interesting and memorable interaction between a few strangers in a grocery store, momentarily brought together by a freak piece of fruit.