Gone Bananas

Pam: Dottie was telling me about taking her mother to Hawaii last week.

Ann: I’m so jealous. Did they have a good time?

Pam: The trip was fine. But Dottie’s mom is such a tightwad it made Dottie nuts.

Ann: I thought this trip was Dottie’s Mother’s Day gift to her mom.

Pam: It was. But Dottie’s mom is even tighter with Dottie’s money than she is with her own.

Ann: My mom can be the same way.

Pam: They were shopping for souvenirs and Dottie was considering buying some painted ceramic hibiscus flowers for her friends. Her mom actually suggested she buy the broken ones off the clearance table and then have the store ship them so that people would just figure they were broken in the mail.

Ann: That’s certainly thrifty and pretty clever. Except wouldn’t they notice that the broken pieces were missing?


Pam: Leave it to you to think of the technicalities. What bugged Dottie the most was her mom kept waking her up early everyday so they wouldn’t sleep through the free continental breakfast. She told her she’d have gladly paid for breakfast for another hour’s sleep. But her mom wouldn’t think of it.

Ann: I think I’d have had to drug my mother if I was Dottie.

Pam: It probably crossed her mind. By the end of the week, she was pretty glad to be headed home. When they finally got to the airport, they went to that special area to mail some fresh pineapple she’d bought for some friends back home.

Ann: Yeah, they’re really strict about bringing fruit and vegetation back to the mainland. I couldn’t even bring my lei home.

Pam: Yep. So Dottie stopped to ship these pineapples, while her mom sat nearby. When she finished up, her mom had disappeared. She finally caught up to her at the security check point on the way to the gate. She was being finger printed in a glass office next to the x-ray machines!

Ann: Finger printed! As in being arrested? What on earth did she do?

Pam: She tried to go through security with a banana in her pocket.

Ann: That's quite a crime alright. Armed and dangerous.

Pam: When they found the banana in her pocket, the guards told her to go back out to the lobby area and either eat it or throw it away. When Dottie got there, they told her they had made it very clear to her mother that it was against the law to take the banana past the security check point.

Ann: So what had she done with it?

Pam: Believe it or not, she had walked back towards the ticket counter, stopped in plain sight of the guards, put the banana in her other pocket, and tried to get through security again.

Ann: You’re kidding. Is she a little... forgive me, 'bananas'?

Pam: Apparently they were pretty annoyed with her and told her again that it was not a game and that she was to get rid of the banana one way or another before she attempted to pass through security again.

Ann: So how’d she get arrested?

Pam: She walked back towards the ticket counter, out of the sight of the security check point this time, put the banana in the hood of her jacket, and for a third time tried to pass through security with the stupid banana.

Ann: That’s hysterical! What was she thinking?

Pam: That’s what Dottie asked her. She said, “What is your problem Mom? It’s not as though that thing is stuffed with diamonds!” Dottie told me she was going to say cocaine but figured they were in enough trouble.

Ann: So what was so important about that banana?

Pam: Apparently Dottie’s mom picked it up at the hotel’s free continental breakfast. She told Dottie, “It’s not really free you know. You’re paying for it in the price of the room. If you don’t take the food you’re getting ripped off!”

Ann: She’s right but I’d say that’s frugal to the extreme.

Pam: Well Dottie explained to the guards that her mother was on medication and apologized profusely for loosing track of her. She neglected to explain she was only on blood pressure medicine.

Ann: So they let her go?

Pam: They released her but wrote some sort of ticket. Dottie says that that “free banana” so far has cost her a fifteen hundred dollar retainer for the lawyer, with more to come.

Ann: Hopefully she’ll win on ‘appeal’.

Pam: Groan