1.6 Bananas and Rotten TV

When I got home, I threw myself on the worn leather brown couch and without thinking turned on the TV. Nothing on. I flipped through the channels, TV was shockling bad. A mouse was running on a wheel on one show, it was named whiskers and the clock on the bottom right corner of the screen said that he had been running on his wheel for thirty minutes. Change of channel a man dressed in red and black plumes and with a beak was running around a chicken farm causing the clucking chickens that were contently pecking at the ground to scatter in all directions. Terrible TV. And the more I flicked the worse it got.

I thought of Samantha, thought of how I messed things up, thought of the bit of paper in my pocket with her number.

If a girl gives you her number what does that mean? What does a number signify? A number as in a telephone number was a way in which someone could be reached, a personal number that someone had so you could get in direct contact with them. Was this what she wanted? Did she want to meet again? Was this her way of saying, “I find you attractive, let’s meet again.” But I didn’t think she would want to meet again as I had acted like a jerk without realising it, though I had been a jerk nonetheless. It was confusing. Terribly confusing. I scratched my head just above my ear which was located on the right side of my head. A favourite place of mine to itch.

Now let’s be logical, I thought, you have a condition that few people have called over- thinking. You found this out today. You went to your favourite café, met a girl named Samantha, she told you she was studying extraterrestrial studies, you were invited back to her apartment, you started to think too much, you freaked out, she gave you her number, and then you bolted. I mean being told you have some strange and unusual disease and then meeting a girl who is learning to speak Alien doesn’t happen often. Come to think of it I never heard of it happening to anyone before.

I realised at once what was the problem and why I was not still in Samantha’s touching her soft skin and smelling sweet perfume off the nape of her neck. I would still be there if it wasn’t for my over thinking. And that was worrying me. I thought about the prescription and the regime that I would have to undergo if I was to tackle my problem. I laughed out loud, a large “Haaahaaa!” split out of my mouth. It sounded so absurd, I shook my head, rattled it for a second thinking I could somehow cause my brain to revert back to its normal way of thinking, but it didn’t seem to work.

I flicked the channel to a show where a tanned short man with a bushy moustache was standing next to a bunch of bananas explaining the basics, “Banana is the common name used for herbaceous, cultigenic plants in the genus Musa, which, because of their size and structure, are often mistaken for trees. Bananas are green when they are picked, yellow when they are ripe, and brown or black when they rot. Bananas are cultivated for their fruit which bear the same name, and to a lesser extent for the production of fibre and as ornamental plants. Bananas are of the family Musaceae. Globally, bananas rank fourth after rice, wheat and maize in human consumption; they are grown in 130 countries worldwide, more than any other fruit crop. Bananas are native to tropical southeastern Asia but are widely cultivated in tropical regions. In popular culture and commerce, "banana" usually refers to the soft, sweet "dessert" bananas that are usually eaten raw. The bananas from a group of cultivars with firmer, starchier fruit, generally used in cooking rather than eaten raw, are typically known as plantains. Bananas may also be dried and ground into banana flour.”

Televison was rubbish, I had decided that there and then. I flicked the TV off, threw the remote down and slowly walked towards my bedroom where I would sleep for as long as possible so I could rest my head. If only I could somehow switch off like a TV, now that sounded good.