Gallows Humor #3 -- Banana-Head

Gallows humor #3.  (posted on FB July 21,late, copied to blog 7/24.  “Banana-Head”)

Hey, Banana-head!

For reasons that escape me entirely, a young lady who shall remain nameless usually addresses people whom she likes as “Something-Head.”  Mama-Duck-Head, Papa-Duck-Head, Banana-Head, Bunny-Head.  I like her very much, but she is strange.

Banana-head: I want to focus on that one briefly.  Bananas grow in bunches, like grapes.  But the weird thing is, grape bunches hang down is a rational fashion, with the pointy end toward the ground.   Banana bunches point up, like flowers.  Flowers don’t weigh half a pound apiece, so it’s okay for them to go up.  Bananas have heft.  When they go up, they challenge the eye’s reasonable expectations.  They seem to defy gravity.  They are upside down, like the famous baobab tree.

Well, banana-head, when you grew your skull, you started out in a totally bizarre fashion, like the platypus.  The platypus seems to be part beaver, part kangaroo, part unicorn, part bumblebee – a very confusing creature indeed.  And you: you don’t resemble a platypus, but you were such a jumble!  Part human, part armadillo-head, part banana-head.

Hm. This isn’t very funny, is it?  Well, suck it up.

What I mean is, your skull is made of plates, like armor.  The plates were like coral, with a clear stem and branches, and with all of the stunning swirly beauty of coral.  Or like fractal crystal growth.  Your plates were beautiful like coral, or like a two-dimensional fern.  Delicate, thin, but strong.  They could have been made by master craftsmen, maybe the Elves in Rivendell.

Beautiful, but still armor.  These plates are between the tough rubber-like pigskin-football that holds your brains, and the whole skin covering.  They grow on the sides of the football; they are hooked onto – probably more like rooted into – the tough membrane around your brain.  They are designed to protect your brains from getting damaged.  (Too late.) 

BUT, banana-head, your armor plates didn’t hang down in a rational fashion.  They hung UP.  The hook that holds them to the wall of the brain-bag is at the BOTTOM of each plate.  Ferns grow up, and coral grows up; but armor hangs down, and these plates are armor.

Armor hangs down, okay?  But you, banana-head, attached your armor at the bottom, and laid it out neatly, pointing up, like a bunch of bananas.

Adults don’t have pretty ferns or swervy curvy coral in their heads.  Years ago, your armor plates met and knitted together into a single solid piece, and – no offense meant – it’s pretty ugly.  Skulls are grim and sober – “remember death” and all that stuff – and they are functional.  So we don’t expect them to be beautiful like a gazelle.  But at first, they were oh-so-charming.  You can still see the seams where the plates met and meshed, like continental plates colliding and forming mountains; but pre-collision delicacy is ancient ancient history. 

I learned that in dumpsters.  Never saw pictures of it, or read about it.

I guess it’s not funny.

I cried then.  Now, too, actually.