" Tree Bananas of Brazil" @Mauriciopartyguy

Brazil's Three Bananas September 21, 2020 It was a Sunday, much like yesterday. Still sleepy, Mouro came downstairs for coffee, but right off the bat, he was asked who had eaten the three bananas from the fruit bowl; he replied that it wasn't him. They retorted that it could only have been him—after all, he was the loafer who didn't work but certainly ate. He insisted it wasn't him, and so the day began with a heated exchange over who had or hadn't eaten the three bananas—bananas that were meant for his mother, who was sitting there having coffee with her other children, her son-in-law, and the maid. A shouting match ensued: he was told that if he wanted bananas, he should work and buy them; that he was a bum who deserved nothing. He fired back at every accusation. A fight broke out, and his mother, already in tears, begged them to stop; yet, minutes later, the commotion resumed with verbal aggression flying back and forth. They were being pushed out toward the veranda near the table—a scuffle of shoving and restraining, with his brother-in-law trying to prevent a brawl—when he took a punch to the back of the neck, while the aggressor's hand slammed hard against the railing and wall. Amidst a mix of triumph and scorn—and with everyone distressed by the conflict over the alleged bananas—Mouro left the house, sad and nursing a slight neck pain. He didn't report it to the police and spent about two weeks with his head tilted to the side, in pain from an injured nerve or something similar; he also refused to go to the hospital to avoid implicating his attacker, though he did tell a few friends and posted about it on a friend's page. At first, he realized the fight was absurd, as the situation stemmed from a lack of understanding and consideration. The key factor was that his mother—an Alzheimer’s patient who loved bananas—could easily eat three of them on a Sunday without remembering having done so. Mouro was still sleepy when he came downstairs for coffee; everything seemed calm and quiet—but that was far from the truth. Like a sudden gust of south wind, the question came: "Where are the bananas that were here?" Mouro gave a direct answer: "I don't know." Then came an accusation that made no sense: "They were my mother's—*you* ate them." He didn't answer, but the question came again: "It *was* you, you bum! I buy fruit, bring it into the house, and you eat it. Go to work and buy your own bananas." A back-and-forth argument ensued—"It was you," "No, it wasn't," "You're a bum"—with Mouro retorting, "And *you*?" This went on for a few minutes, with everyone present complaining and arguing about the missing bananas. It nearly escalated into physical violence, prevented only by the intervention of those nearby. The family—mother, brother, sisters, brother-in-law, and the housekeeper—sat there drinking coffee, watching in near-astonishment at this life-or-death dispute over three fresh, ripe, juicy bananas bought at the Friday market. The mother, already in tears, begged them to stop fighting over the "Bananas of Hate" (a play on the film *The Grapes of Wrath*). Then, the "alpha" brothers stood up from the table and resumed the verbal brawl; in reality, the situation was simple to explain, given that the disease affects both short-term and long-term memory. Alzheimer's patients often remember events from the distant past—years ago—yet fail to recall things that happened just minutes or hours earlier. There are a few possibilities here: perhaps someone ate the items without saying anything; or—a third point relevant to Mauricio—maybe the three people in that kitchen ate them and used the incident as a form of aggression, having spent their lives believing the patient was a deadbeat and a social parasite on the family. Only the person who ate the three items—provided they didn't suffer a guilty conscience, a stomach ache, or diarrhea—could say for sure what actually happened. If Agatha Christie were alive, this could be the plot of a story titled "The Case of the Three Undemocratic Bananas." A true story recounted to me by a friend from the other side of the country sometime in 2018. Mauricio Jose da Silva – Social Worker / @mauriciopartyguy – Caregiver and Phlebotomy Technician (MA, USA).