Top Ten Reasons My Boyfriend Keeps Telling That Mitch Hedberg Joke That Goes “My Friend Asked Me If I Wanted a Frozen Banana. I Said ‘No, But I Want a Regular Banana Later, So . . . Yeah’”
Jennifer Wortman
10. It’s summer.
9. I’m a sweaty melon.
8. I can’t eat a frozen or regular banana without cutting it into a measly stub due to the gestational diabetes and even so it’s not recommended, there are fruits with lower glycemic indexes, like strawberries, that I can still only eat if I measure them precisely, and I don’t even like bananas much but now I want one all the time, I want a goddamn banana, and my boyfriend kept eating bananas so I threw them straight in the apartment dumpster and he said, “This is America,” and bought more, and I threw those bananas in the dumpster so he threw out my strawberries, and then I was a sweaty melon crying in the apartment parking lot, and he apologized and I apologized and we had a long heartfelt talk about our fears and needs and renewed our love but next thing I knew he was telling that banana joke to everyone we’d see.
7. I’m twenty-six and skinny but I already have lots of things wrong with me like high cholesterol and high blood pressure and a thyroid problem and a little arthritis and a touch of glaucoma, and I always thought low blood sugar was my thing because when I got hungry I’d get psycho, but now it turns out high blood sugar is my thing, so much my thing that even though I follow doctor’s orders, every last fucking one, I still need insulin. All this is to say that before I was a sweaty melon I wasn’t a regular banana and I’ll never be a regular banana. But neither is he.
6. We’re also not frozen bananas. All he talks about is his freedom, like it’s some big principle and not selfishness. So when he eats a banana or pizza or ice cream cone while crying freedom like he’s fucking Braveheart, I burn. I tell him if he can’t stop thinking of himself he’ll be an awful dad. I remind him about his awful dad and say do you want to be like him? Do you? And he says, maybe I do.
5. A frozen banana can’t become a regular banana. The cold browns the peel and the whole thing looks turd-like. When it defrosts, the inside’s mushy shit.
4. Which I discovered when I found the banana he’d hidden in the freezer and I laid it on the counter and observed it for a while, because the whole point of frozen bananas is they’re a healthy substitute for ice cream, and I thought maybe I’d eat part of that banana, because it would be healthier than ice cream, but then I thought I’d eat the whole frozen banana because it would still be healthier than ice cream and then I thought I’d run to the store and just get a little ice cream, one of those miniature tubs from which I’d take a tiny spoonful and then I thought if I was only going to take a tiny spoonful I might as well get a whole carton of whatever flavor I wanted and then I thought I might as well eat a whole carton of whatever flavor I wanted, just this once, because I deserved it, and I went to the store and bought the ice cream and came back, and I wanted to eat it in front of my boyfriend while screaming freedom like Braveheart and squeezing the mushy-shit banana in his face, but when he got home he saw the mushy shit on the counter and threw it away and said, “I’ve been thinking,” and “I’m so, so sorry,” and I gave him the ice cream and said, “Eat what you want. I’m so sorry too,” and he said, “I don’t want it” and threw the ice cream away and hugged me hard and I hugged him hard back but I kept my eye on that ice cream, melting in the trash can, for the rest of the night. I wanted to pour it down my throat.
3. Maybe I want to be like my awful mom.
2. What kind of person tells the same joke over and over? What kind of person writes a list about why someone tells the same joke over and over?
1. He hates to watch the clock because he says the clock watches back but sometimes he says, hey, isn’t it time for your insulin? Then I wonder if even a stupid fat-poking insulin needle gets him dreaming about dying like Mitch Hedberg and also, more or less, like his dad and my mom, because some people like their contradictions, their cocaine freedom and heroin love, shot straight into their veins. Those are the people to run from but also the people to run to, because the joke they keep telling is a pretty good joke. You laugh even though you know it. You laugh because you know it so well.
Jennifer Wortman is the author of the story collection This. This. This. Is. Love. Love. Love. A recipient of fellowships from the NEA and MacDowell, she lives with her family in Colorado, where she teaches at Lighthouse Writers Workshop and serves as associate fiction editor for Colorado Review. Find more at jenniferwortman.com.
This piece originally appeared in What I Thought of Ain’t Funny, an anthology of stories based on Mitch Hedberg jokes, published jointly by Malarkey and Mythic Picnic in 2020.
