This is bananas

The dress code on a Marine Corps base does not include whether or not to wear a banana suit. I hope that never changes.

Outside the Starbucks on base there were signs reminding Marines to remove their hats and not to swear, as well as posters outlining proper civilian attire. A banana suit was not on the poster.

I was wearing a pair of workout leggings, and a sports bra and tank top underneath the banana suit. According to the dress code, leggings and workout apparel was not allowed in most places on base. However, if I was wearing a banana suit over the top, could it be considered to convey the same effect as a tasteful cardigan sweater? I mean, the banana suit provided a modest tube of polyester fabric over my tight fitting workout apparel that helped to conceal any curves that might distract America’s war fighters or look unprofessional. I even looked as if I could be hired as a banana for, say, a children’s birthday party, which could be a business, I suppose, which would make it business attire. I deemed it acceptable and headed in to get my coffee.

The banana suit was disarming to say the least. I made more friends than enemies in that get up, even with confused Marines trying to figure out if I was having fun or if life in the middle the Mojave Desert had somehow melted my brain.

When you live in Twentynine Palms, you hear stories about spouses who have gone a little crazy after living on the base. I am sure over time the story has adopted some modified details as it is passed along, helping it get a little crazier and a little more compelling with each telling. One spouse, I heard, bought a life-size pillow with her husband’s picture on it and carried it around with her to family functions, restaurants, and everywhere else she went while he was deployed. Her husband’s command finally requested he come home from his deployment because they were convinced she lost her marbles. After about a year or so living in the desert — the picture frames on my walls rattling from artillery fire, the coyotes howling at Taps every night — I started to appreciate her strategy. The banana suit felt like a far healthier outlet than a stuffed husband.

Married to someone serving in the military, I regularly feel like I am tagging along with my husband instead of carving my own path. The dress code applied on base in Twentynine Palms added a certain level of personal paranoia that I was always doing something wrong. The base exchange, laid out like a department store, sold racks of spaghetti strap tanks, crop tops and short shorts. You could buy them on base, you’d just have to wear them elsewhere. Similarly, brands like Under Armor advertised women’s sports apparel by showing a woman sitting on a weight bench in only a sports bra. I would have been kicked out of any gym on base if I wore that, but I am sure the image pleased the largest client base of the exchange while they shopped for foot powder, Monster energy drinks, beef jerky and Men’s Journal.

The banana suit did not come from the exchange, but instead from a garage sale to raise funds for a running club I helped to manage on base. We used the money to put on free races around the base and buy bananas and water for runners, as well as supplies to mark the race courses. The banana suit was an old Halloween costume donated by a friend’s husband that didn’t even make it into the sale, but instead was set aside as the new mascot for the club. I debuted the suit on the sidelines of the club’s triathlon a month or so after the garage sale. Marines driving by in 7-ton trucks on their way to the wide open desert to blow up targets and train for combat were entertained by a dancing banana, ringing a cowbell, and belting out “Sm-aaaaa-ck the Bah-nan-ah!” to racers running through the finish line.

If you are dancing around in a banana suit, it is hard to be in a bad mood. If you are in a bad mood and wearing a banana suit, then I instead challenge you to not laugh at the image of someone acting like a jerk while wearing a banana suit. The banana suit forces you to not take life too seriously, but instead to take a serious interest in your joy and the joy of others. From its first race, the banana suit became more than a silly costume, it became an outlet for anxiety, a way to lift others up, even an olive branch to the community. Those of us who have worn it have served as goodwill ambassadors for the club. I believe this is also in large part because it is hard to argue with a banana.

The banana suit taught me to find the absurdities in my life and take full advantage of them to learn how to take life less seriously. Once while I was teaching an outdoor yoga class on base, the port-o-john cleaning truck showed up to service the toilet. A group of a dozen or so women were deep into a lunge for the Warrior pose, facing the john as we watched a young guy drag the industrial blue hose inside of it for the collection. Images of Randy Quaid from the film “Christmas Vacation” flooded my head. I pictured the scene of him draining his RV’s sewage into the storm sewer, wearing a leather bomber and a dainty blue robe as we continued into the next pose. Forget the scented candle, smiling Buddha statue and the meditation music at the front of a pricey studio, we had a mop-headed bathroom attendant producing a sloshing noise from the inside of a plastic outhouse. I reached deep inner happiness thinking about how absolutely hilarious this situation looked from our perspective and that of the guy cleaning the toilet.

Eventually the base police showed up at the finish line of the triathlon where the racers were high-fiving me as a larger than life banana. My heart sank a little as the patrol car pulled up, lights on, to where we were standing at the edge of the street. My mind immediately raced to figure out what I did wrong. My heart lodged itself right in my throat, and I started to build up my defense. The police officer waved me over. He had a request. He wanted to take a picture with the lady in the banana suit.

This is bananas

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