A few weeks ago I woke up in a particularly fractious mood, I think because I'd been eating Communist Soljanka into the wee hours of the morning. I came downstairs and I decided to have a banana for breakfast, just a banana, keeping it simple. And I was looking at this banana lying there in front of me when some rage started to come over me. I started laying into the banana - verbally not physically, I'm not aggressive in that way, I always talk before I hit - and I really tore it off a strip, articulate, you know, calling it shorty and ugly and things like that. Incidentally, something you should know about bananas is that they are very placid, either that or they have long memories. Anyway after five minutes I felt I'd said enough and before it could think of a come-back I ate it in two gulps. So, feeling pleased with myself and in a funny way virile, I packed my good tie and went off to work. After lunch my boss comes up to me and totally lays into me, telling me my work output is well below par and that he thinks I'm short and ugly, the latter of which I personally felt was unreasonable. Now, before you ask how the court case is going let me tell you that kind of negativity and put-down was not unusual. Me and my boss we had issues, along the lines of Putin and Poroshenko, and I figured today he was just ball-aching about some lost investors. Also, you know, I have background information on him. Nevertheless I was smarting by the end of the day.
The next morning I woke up with the same feelings of malice and I start to think that maybe I'm just not a morning person. Again the banana gets it, both barrels and I'm calling out, 'Anybody in there? Eh? Come on out!' And again just after lunch I get it from my boss, both barrels, almost word for word. This went on two weeks.
Finally I figured: voodoo, you know, that I was caught up in some weird gris-gris and that I was experiencing everything the banana did, right up until I ate it. So, the next day I was deliberately nice to the banana, calling it sweet, funny and smart and most of all purposeful and I thought by doing this maybe I'd get back the same sorts of compliments and in the long run my life would be immeasurably enriched. I get into work and all is good, everything's going real well and I think I've nailed it right up until after lunch when my boss gives me another torrent of abuse and punches me in the mouth. There and then I hand in my notice and the joke is on him because yesterday I won for constructive dismissal.
