Bananas

 Bananas are no longer like phones. 

This was a stunning revelation to me on Sunday at kid's church when I was using a banana to call the preschoolers and they stared at me likeI was an idiot with a banana in my ear. I was even making the ringing sound and they still stared befuddled. 

One of the moms finally broke it to me that phones don't look like bananas anymore or ring like the sound I was making (I'm pretty sure they haven't rung like that since rotary phones). Kids hold a flat hand to their ear when imitating a phone nowadays.

I wanted to cry. 

Talking to bananas and making a teenager pick up their banana to talk back to me has long been one of my favorite activities on trips. I know there is so much to grieve right now and so much chaos, but this felt like the last straw. Why do bananas continue to exist if not to call someone across the room?

I probably also wanted to cry because it reminded me of an article I recently read by Lauren Collins called Missed Calls: Long-distance love, death and grief. It was a powerful article about accompanying her father long distance through death. A quote that struck me was:

I'd always thought of Face-Time as a weak substitute for first-order interaction,whether in person or in writing. Like Diet Coke, it was to be avoided except when there were no other decent options. Better to have the real thing, less frequently, than to settle for constant interruptions and glitches. Video calls are unsatisfying not just because of the lack of touch but because they require mutual active presence. Conversation is only a part of companionship. It's hard to just be when you're on a call, hard to see when you're constantly looking.

I know conversation, worship and learning through Zoom have been a huge gift, but I'm so tired when I "end call" I feel like a wimp. I can talk to a preschooler over a banana (at least when they still used bananas) until the cows came home, but thirty minutes on Zoom or the phone and I'm wiped out.

It's okay. Things change and I can adapt, but I needed to take a minute and grieve the banana. Maybe I'll start calling kids on graham crackers.