Donna Speaks: My Red Banana Bike

My means of transportation  when I was a student on the beautiful, but very expansive, Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge in the early 70's was a bike.  Not just any bike.  I was really uptown 'cause I had a bike with a banana seat, high-rise handle bars, and push-your-pedals-backward brakes. 

Remember those? I was on a tight budget and my red banana bike was the cheapest one I could find that had all its parts and moved forward when I pedaled.

I was at LSU for three semesters: fall, spring, and summer. Miss Banana served me very well the first two semesters, and she was still going strong come summer.  Or, so I thought.  What happened really wasn't her fault.  I can't blame her.  I shoulda known.

The day it happened, a summer storm had blown up late morning, but the sun was shinning now and all seemed well when I unlocked Miss Banana, mounted her, and made my way through the puddles to my afternoon class.

I was taking a political science class taught by a professor I really admired and there were only two classes to go.  And I was the only female in the class.  Miss Banana got me there just in time.  I walked down the long, crowded hallway to the classroom and made my way through the other male students to my seat in the back.

Class was uneventful and afterwards I returned to Miss Banana, mounted, and pedaled back to my dorm room.  When I got to my room, I changed into shorts.  I  was folding my mustard colored bell-bottoms across a hanger when I noticed a rather large, damp, reddish-brown stain on the back of my mustard colored bell-bottoms.  The stain was in the shape of a banana.  The stain started just above my ass crack, got wider as it went down, then thinned out again and stopped somewhere between my legs. 

"Oh, Joy!", I said aloud.  It looked like I'd crapped in my pants.  I'd biked from and back to my dorm imprinting my ass with banana brown.  I'd walked  to and from my classroom with a big ole poo-poo stain on my rear end.  I'd made my way into and out of a classroom full of guys, and a male professor with what looked like squashed elephant dung all over my rear.  

The only thought I could console myself with was that "at least I didn't stink!", and that there was only one class to go.  My mom's oft spoken "Shit Fire and Save the Matches!" suddenly popped into my mind.

The metal under Miss Banana's seat had rusted, gradually impregnated the seat cushion, and, unknown to me, had begun to ooze over, under, around, and through the seat cushion. 

Squish... Squish... Squash!

Yep.  That's what had happened that summer day in 1971.  Miss Banana had succeeded in embarrassing the hell out of me.  I personally believe that she knew that I planned to abandon her, unlocked in the bike rack, when I left LSU after graduation in two weeks.  It was a custom to leave your bike behind for another needy student.

I smiled and was comforted by the thought, "Yes, that's definitely what I'll do... another student will certainly need Miss Banana."

Have a great week, Miss Althea.