(slip)

Some ideas we humans possess I simple don’t believe. They must have come from some ancient and lively tale teller’s imagination, myths of yore, or more recently, urbanites who like to lie to uphold the dharma of the ego. Yet we hold them as if they were reality, even recreating false scenarios to reassure ourselves that they indeed happened. Imprint in brain … over and over.
One such common happenstance in slapstick routines is the banana peel slip. I would challenge the reputation for truth-telling of anyone who claims to have had it happen. I sure haven’t, and I love my bananas. Peels, not so much. Doesn’t mean it didn’t. Seems particularly unlikely to me, peculiar event indeed. What’s a banana peel doing on the floor in the first place? Are we that messy? Were sloppy monkeys invading the hallways?
Sure there may have been a time when linoleum came from a culture possessed with colour on everything, where motifs were brilliant displays of fruits and flowers. Certainly 50s wallpaper could be that way, 60s wallpaper psychedelically entwined variations of the 50s stuff. But I never saw linoleum or tile so possessed. Not enough for a banana peel to disguise itself on, hiding around some corner waiting for Mr. Unsuspecting.
We do slip. We do slip up, but that’s an entirely different meaning. We slip on ice to such a degree that some Scottish guys invented a whole silly game of targets and rocks about that. We slip on floors if our shoes aren’t right. We slip on roads in cars. We slip on oil spills, on water, on spilled soup, on coffee, on wax, on mangoes. But banana peels? Even in exotic banana plantation locales like Ecuador, or the vast acreages in Kerala, you’re more likely to be injured from falling coconuts than the proverbial banana slip.
So this inane discussion begs the question: From whence did said myth originate?