the story behind “beers & bananas.”
It was July 4th, 2009 and I was busy getting a sunburn.
I was laying on a beach on Cape Cod with my two friends, holding in my gut and ignoring the fact that I could almost smell the tiny hairs on my arms starting to singe under the unforgiving rays of the sun. I’m not one of those girls who considers “tanning” to be an actual activity. This is mainly because I’m offensively pale and have little tolerance for pain. I am aware that others are not like this, and so I usually suck it up and join my darker-skinned friends on the beach during the summertime (after covering myself in three layers of SPF 75 lotion). I’ll sit there silently with a smile on my face, knowing that the next time I look in a mirror, there will be a bloated pink version of me staring back.
We had been baking, or sitting there for a few hours and at one point I sat up and contemplated hurling myself into the ocean for just a minute of sweet relief (even though that would mean Round Four of Overly Agressive Suntan Lotion Application). And then I heard it.
A middle-aged man with slicked-back hair wearing Oakley shades and navy blue trunks was laughing loudly with his friends on the towel directly behind us. It was a loud guffaw that sounded like it was coming from Smokey the Bear. The sheer volume of it was impressive, and after I spotted the empty beer bottles half-heartedly concealed in a nearby cooler, I realized what a wonderful drunk-laugh it was.
In a booming voice, Smokey the Drunk suddenly yelled, “Well that’s just CRAZY, James! That’s like…beers and bananas!” He smacked James on the back and continued to guffaw. For most people, the moment wouldn’t have been anything noteworthy, or at least not something that you would name your blog over.
But for me, it felt like someone had just hit the re-start button on my brain. “Beers and bananas?” What the hell? We live in a world where there is a constant stream of information, a constant bombardment of brand-new things to know and try. I thought I had heard it all. But I had NEVER heard something as absurd a phrase as “beers and bananas,” and it was refreshing to hear a foreign English phrase.
When it came time to think of a title for this blog, Beers and Bananas was the first and only thing I could think of. Because let’s face it: sometimes, travel doesn’t make any goddamn sense. Sometimes you get stuck on the runway in a small airplane for 14 hours and the airline doesn’t give you food. Or sometimes the hostel you booked months ago has no record of you ever existing, or a pickpocket steals your chocolate bar and not your iPhone, or you find yourself about to bungee jump off of the Sky Tower in New Zealand. When you wander around the world, you never know what you’ll find, and sometimes you have to try some crazy things in order to find what you want.
Like beers and bananas.
