Life's Too Short to Eat Dead Bananas

Okay, I may or may not have eaten the alive parts of two dead bananas, because honestly, eating bananas for me is just a conduit for eating peanut butter.

I can’t just eat a spoonful of peanut butter, I’m not a heathen!

I’m on a diet, so finding interesting things to eat that fit into my paradigm is now a huge pastime of mine. I’ve even started cooking, which is truly outrageous for me, and I feel I deserve some kind of medal for these actions, but apparently, no one is handing out basic survival duties medals. Who knew?

I hardly eat out anymore, so I’m saving a bunch of money and calories, and oh, how I miss the oversalted, overpriced, fatty foods I ate not too long ago. Turns out if you control what you put into your body, your body works and feels better. Why don’t they tell you these things in school? I remember eating chips and a candy bar for lunch for much of my high school years; it didn’t make me fat, so I thought it was okay. I didn’t need to know what a parallelogram is; I needed vital health information. 

I could go on for days about what they didn’t teach us in school. They told us America is the best country in the world, but they didn’t tell us that democracy is so fragile and that one single lunatic could challenge it. They didn’t explain how credit scores work because there must be a secret formula that explains why my credit score goes up and down, even when I do nothing different. And sometimes it goes down when I pay off my debt. Somebody explain this insanity! 

They didn’t tell us the older we get, the less sense the world makes, but the more sense the little annoying things that our parents told us make. I mean, are we saying that the rents weren’t as idiotic as we thought they were in our teens? Yes, we are saying that. Now some of them are dead, and we miss them and wish they would call us and harass us about taking our vitamins and saving money.

How come I never learned in school that I would have to go to therapy simply because the people in my life who need therapy refuse to go? I mean, honestly, that’s not the only reason, but…We never learned that we could only be a panic attack away from a nervous breakdown and a couple of paychecks away from homelessness. 

And how come I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up? I am not an actual adult, I will tell you that much. I may be middle-aged, but there have to be some more criterion that makes you a living, breathing adult. Adulting duties like paying taxes and budgeting so you don’t go bankrupt are still intensely difficult for me. 

They say health is wealth after the age of fifty. Being healthy is a full-time job; I feel like I eat more now than I did when I wasn’t on a diet. I eat all these fruits and veggies, and they are actually awesome, but carbs and sugar are my long lost loves that I’ve reluctantly said goodbye to for the most part. And chocolate, don’t get me started on chocolate. Forget cancer, why is there no research on how to make calorie-free chocolate?

I dance to get exercise. It’s actually kind of fun, but I am by nature a sedentary soul, and moving a lot is new for me.

I had no clue that sitting on the couch all day on a computer or in front of a TV is probably the biggest habit that could kill me. Now I try to be more active in general, but being a couch potato, well, I’m going to be real with you, I miss it. 

On another completely unrelated note, there are countries, don’t quote me, I don’t remember which ones, but they teach compassion and empathy in schools to young children. WHAT? Who knew that those are some of the most important traits a human being and a society can have? 

The more people I meet and read about, especially in our government, who lack these qualities, the more I realize some people need to be taught how to be good. Some people are assholes by nature, and you have to force them to act humanely.

We need to revamp our entire education system to include basic living skills and moral lessons. The more I look at the world around me, the more I understand that we are lacking real education. Math and reading alone aren’t going to cut it. And why didn’t they ever tell me that all those years of daydreaming as a child actually grew my imagination and made me a more intelligent and creative person? 

I’m in the teaching profession, and I’m very convinced we should be teaching a whole lot of other stuff than what is in the traditional curriculum, including in college.

You want to call it ‘Ethics’ in higher education, then call it that. But don’t make it an elective, make it mandatory. Apparently, it needs to be taught. Not everyone is born with a moral compass; this is becoming more evident to me every day.

You want to call it ‘Financial Planning,’ sign me up. I don’t understand the stock market even a little bit. Do you?

You know how doctors have to do continuing medical education? Every person should be required to do continuing life education credits for the rest of their lives. And like doctors, we should all have to recite a Hyppocratic Oath, to do no harm.

There is a thing or two I could learn about a thing or two. I don’t know how to change a tire or do simple things on my smartphone or computer. Teach me, someone. I have friends I go to for tech support, but I would love to still learn to do some things myself. I mean, I’m tech support in my home. In case you’re wondering how that’s going, I’ll just say we are still paying for cable for no good reason, and when the SmartTV stops working. Sometimes, I just decide I’m not watching TV anymore. Not the worst of outcomes since it gets me away from the idiot box, but come on.

I’m amazed every day that I’m able to use this very website and create coherent posts, with actual images. This is the most tech-savvy thing I have ever done in my entire life, and I’m actually kind of proud of it. Again, no one is handing out awards. But I want to learn how to do more interesting things with it every day.

But back to my ludite nature, don’t even get me started on my printer, the black hole of technological existence. Have you ever met a home printer that has behaved? If so, you are experiencing a very unique form of good karma. There is no such thing as a printer that doesn’t have mood swings that are wilder than mine, and I’m in perimenopause. And as a final note, I had never heard of perimenopause until I woke up one day and had it. No warning, no education about it, just hot flashes and insomnia.

So, in a nutshell, life’s a bitch, and no one is preparing anyone for any of this. We need to rethink and reevaluate our systems and goals. We also need to be okay with being wrong about anything all the time. We need to be okay with changing our minds. We need to open our minds. We need…We need…We need. 

’Life’s too short to buy green bananas,’ that was the slogan for my senior year in high school. That was the most important thing I learned in high school. These are the Days was our theme song. And I sing it now and then and think to myself, these are still the days. To remember. 

nina