I get to be the Chiquita Banana in the Spring Concert!

I tried out for a solo in the Christmas Concert because there were a bunch of them, but I did not get picked. I almost didn’t try out for this one because I was afraid I would lose again.

Mr. Simon left after the Christmas Concert and we have a new substitute music teacher for the rest of the school year. Mr. Simon has been playing his guitar and wearing his shaggy hair cut ever since I can remember. When we’re good in class, he’ll play “Cats in the Cradle” for us. Once, we went to see Mr. Simon perform with his band at The Daily Grind in Nashville. He waved at us from the front and played “That Filthy Cockroach,” which he sometimes sings for us in class too.

But he’s gone now. His wife got a new job and so he had to move away. And we have a new lady. She’s young and excitable and needs someone to be the Chiquita Banana since we’re singing the jingle in the Spring Concert.

I can’t even really say that I auditioned. Her selection process started with,

“Boys in one line, girls in another” then

“Line up by height” specifically

“I need someone tall to wear the skirt because it’s very long” and so

“Sarah! You get to be the Chiquita Banana! I even have a basket of fruit for you to wear on your head during the song!”

We have the concert in the gym. Rows and rows of folding chairs fill up with our parents and grandparents and baby siblings. We stand nervously at center court and warble a few tunes.

Half way through, I leave my spot in the back row and tie a red skirt around my waist and someone’s mom plunks a heavy, plastic fruit basket onto my head. When I hear the opening chords and “I’m Chiquita Banana and I come to say I come from leetle island down eQUAtor way” I shimmy and snap my upheld arms just the way I was told.

Everyone in the audience smiles. A few of my classmates snicker. I don’t care.

I get to be Chiquita Banana!

I sing a song about bananos.
I sing it low and I sing it hi-igh.
I make big hit with ‘mericanos
singing songs about bananos.

Singing in the car is our form of family bonding. No song is safe. Disney tunes, Christmas carols, little ditties from childhood, “Arms of the Angel” by Sara McLaughlin. We sing at the top of our lungs. Mom in the front seat driving and the rest of us crammed in the backseat with random articles of clothes, discarded fast food containers, jars of coins, ribbon. Mom just can’t seem to keep that car cleaned out. We pile in on top of it all, seatbelts optional, and sing.

On a road trip to Utah, we take a minivan. It’s a long drive. 16 hours. We sometimes pull over to nap in a rest stop or to watch the sunrise. My basketball team made it to nationals and we’re making the long haul there and back on the interstates. We stop at a little museum somewhere out west, and climb aboard covered wagons and watch a fountain of a man pouring water out of his boot. Costumes, sets, and other props take up an entire room in the back. We put on a play. Mom records it. I am a damsel in distress. My brother is an Indian chief who captured me. My other brother is the sheriff on his way to rescue me. We laugh so hard that we cannot breathe, cannot stand up straight, cannot think straight. And in the car, we sing “Celebration” by Kool and the Gang when we finally reach another state line.

Mom stops on the side of the highway to video a cow in a pasture. We have cows in the pasture at home too, but this is a Nebraska cow (or a Utah cow or something “western”). Our cramped legs can use the stretch anyway, so we gripe and whine and complain but we get out of the car and watch the cows. Suddenly, a snake! Mom is terrified of snakes. It is positioned between us and the van. Did we walk over it and not even realize it? It starts to slither. We jump and shriek as one, as a family. Perhaps more terrifying than attacking us, it makes its way toward the van. The side door is hanging wide open. Kids never think to close the door so the battery won’t run down or so the snake won’t be able to get inside.

We don’t have any idea where the snake went after he disappeared beneath the van. Someone surmises that he slithered up our tailpipe and would most likely poison, strangle, and eat us all in our sleep. We sing louder now, because we are afraid. The songs carry a hint of desperation. After a while, we forget to be afraid. Winter comes, and we drive through the streets at home, attempting to belt out “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…” but no one can remember all the words, so some parts come out as simply noise or hums. We sing on the way to school Christmas concerts, on the way from winter dances, on our way to town to get groceries. Our breath fogs up the glass and we draw little figures or write things backwards so you can read it from the outside or make foot prints with our hands, the way a girl showed me how to do on the school bus once.

We sing in the car.