Is That A Banana In Your Bunker Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?

I have a Banana Bunker, and it causes a stir wherever I take it.

What the heck is a Banana Bunker, you’re probably asking yourself?

This.

What the WHAT? What is that FOR?

Does this help?

I bought these for my kids’ lunches several years ago, thinking that banana and peanut butter would be a great addition to their lunches, without the bananas getting smooshed. There are other banana holders out there that look more like a banana and less like a dildo, but this one seemed most likely to conform to the shape of the banana, which is why I chose it, I SWEAR! It is ribbed for the banana’s pleasure, NOT MINE!

My husband took one look and them and said no, the kids will not be taking those to school.

So they sat in our fruit bowl for a long time, unused, unloved. I eventually gave one to a friend as a gag gift.

And then, one day last semester, my daughter asked if she could take a banana to school. “No sweetie,” I told her, “it would get squished in your lunchbox.” And Fiona grabbed the Banana Bunker and said “But I can take it in this!”

Sigh. I had three choices: I could say no and give her no explanation (which I knew wouldn’t fly). I could say yes but explain why some kids might make fun of it. Or I could just let her take it and hope the other kids in her class were as innocent as she was.

I let her take it, and I didn’t say anything. Yes, I’m a chicken.

Around lunchtime that day, I waited for a phone call from the school, or maybe an email from her teacher. Nothing!!! Phew.

Since then she’s taken it in to school a couple more times. And now that I’m not eating bread or pasta or potatoes or a bunch of my other foods, I’ve started using it too! (If I don’t have “acceptable” food with me I’m just going to live on giant packages of peanuts while I’m out, because they’re available at every newsstand in NYC.)

It totally works, but yeah, I get some stares when I take it out of my purse.

I even made it my “Byte of the Week” on this week’s episode of Parenting Bytes. (Except apparently I was remembering the story wrong – according to my blog, this is what happened when Jake wanted to use it.)

And then it showed up on Groupon and was all over my Facebook feed this morning. It’s no longer available, but you can always get it on Amazon.

I love being years ahead of a trend!