This is the story of how I learned that bananas are a great source of potassium and why I still grin whenever someone mentions that fact.
So when I was 14 or maybe 15, my mom had to leave town for two weeks. She decided that to be responsible, she could leave me at home, but that I’d definitely need someone to ‘watch’ me for that long. At least someone who could drive.
She chose a 16 year old girl from our small town to come be my ‘chaperone’ as it were. Her reasoning was that this girl could drive and would be able to make sure I got where I needed to go and I wouldn’t be alone.
We didn’t talk about the fact that this girl was well known in town for sleeping with the married guy who lived to the north of us. We just talked about the fact that she was super responsible. After all, the neighbor to the south of us hired her to clean his house and he trusted her with that, so surely she was responsible.
As it turns out, this might not have been the best person to introduce my naive self to the world, but that's just the way the cookie crumbled in this case.
The first day after my mom left, this girl took me to to the neighbors house. She wanted to show me her discovery, which, as it turned out was his porn stash. This was a good long while ago and this guy had a stash of video tapes full of porn. Nothing shocking, I suppose, but to my innocent, naive self, watching people have sex was pretty surprising.
In the video we watched, this surprisingly voluptuous woman was all concerned because her doctor told her that she needed more potassium. He had told her that bananas were a great source, but she didn’t have any available.
The guy in the ‘movie’ was so nice as to offer her a solution. He told her that he had something similar to a banana, but much better. He told her that she could have and it was loaded with potassium. She proceeded to take him up on that offer, quite joyously. She was apparently very thankful for his help.
And to this day, I think of that scene whenever anyone mentions potassium. For a very long time, I thought it really WAS a good source of it and now that I think of it, I’m not sure if it’s even true or not.
So there you have it, my first entry for the @freewritehouse Selfie Challenge.