Bananas Are Brown Too!
By Tony Magee, MS, MBA
The Destiny Doctor®
I remember an experience I had
when I was in the first grade at Saint Paul
Lutheran School in Lynwood, California. My
teacher, Mrs. Pierce, had instructed our class
to use our brand-new crayons to color a
particular fruit on an assigned worksheet.
There were five different kinds of fruit to
color. Pupils had strawberries, apples,
oranges, grapes or bananas. The picture on my
worksheet was of a bunch of bananas. I was
excited about this assignment. Coloring in the
first grade was my favorite activity. I was a
great coloring artist. I was the Master of the
Crayon!
When we all finished coloring our
fruit, Mrs. Pierce had a “show and tell.”
First, she called upon Melissa to display her
beautiful red strawberries. Then, Mark got up
and showed us his orange oranges. Next, Howard
stood up with his purple grapes. Mrs. Pierce
had gone through the whole class roster before
she called me up to her desk for my show and
tell. With a big smile on my face, I held up my
picture of bananas before the class. There was
a pause and then everyone began to laugh out
loud. Mrs. Pierce was laughing even louder than
the other students. I didn’t understand, so I
asked my teacher, “What is so funny and why is
everybody laughing at me?” She replied, “How
silly of you to color your bananas brown.
Everyone knows that bananas are yellow.”
I was devastated and began to
cry. Now Mrs. Pierce was the one who couldn’t
understand: why was I so upset? You see, when
bananas are freshly picked for produce, they are
usually light green. When they are distributed,
they are first delivered to the more affluent
communities in shades between light green and
faint yellow. But by time those same bananas
made it to various parts of my community within
South-Central Los Angeles, they were a dull
yellow with big brown spots. And when they
finally got to my house, those same bananas were
brown. At the age of six, this was what I
knew. Brown bananas were my reality while
attending the privileged Saint Paul Lutheran
School. Mrs. Pierce, I
did successfully complete your assignment.
Bananas are brown too!
“If I care
to listen to every criticism, let alone act on
them, then this shop
may as well
be closed for all other businesses. I have
learned to do my best,
and if the
end result is good, then I do not care for any
criticism,
but if the
end result is not good, then even the praise of
ten angels
would not
make the difference.”
~
Abraham Lincoln
© 2003-2008 Tony Magee, MS, MBA and
PlatinumStar® Life-Strategies
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