Quite Possibly, The World’s Perfect Food

This reminded me of when I was in college my professor was telling us a subject for an “Impromptu Speech” in a public speaking class. We’ll everyone else was getting, John Lennon, Ronald Reagan, or some other current topic that was happening at the time. He had given me a little hard time because everyone else would spend days preparing for a speech and I’d write mine and prepare 15 minutes prior to the class starting.  I’d score some easy A’s and really didn’t understand why this class was so hard for a lot of people. So when I walked up to the stairs to the stage he looks at me and says 1 word, “Banana”. What I said, Banana he responded so up I went scrambling through my head thinking, WTF?

Thank Goodness it was only a 2 minute speech and worth 30% of our grade. I smiled at the room full of people (they’d given away free lunches to staff and students to watch) and started.

Most people think of the Banana as simply a piece of fruit. But a banana throughout history has been a big part of the worlds population diet but also they have been a great source entertainment. In a lot of silent film they used banana’s as part of their slapstick humor. In Tarzan they used it as an insentive to get Cheetah to perform his lines correctly, and in Gilligan’s Island it was constantly used as a prop. (Now here is what got them) Today we still see Banana being used as entertainment. Just last weekend I was at a local club and women would get up on stage and have “Banana Eating Contest”. They would eat them whole, or nibble them a little at a time, or treat them as if they were a Popsicle. Now this was one of my favorite contest that I’ve seen at night clubs. …well at that point I had the entire audience wide eyed (including the professor) and laughing and smiling.  I ended the speech by saying, “You know what is said about a Banana… “Quite Possibly, The World’s Perfect Food”.

Well I got a standing ovation for that and an “A” for the speech! Of course as I walked of the professor just looked at me and said, “I would have bet money I had thrown you off.” He shook my hand and said, “you’re a born speaker”.

The next time in the classroom everyone keep asking how did I find out what he was giving, and swore that I would have had to prepare. But even the professor said that he was making them up as the students walked on stage.

Anyway I love this photo, I don’t know why but I love it!