CW: Implied SA. Ableism. First time writing horror, always looking for constructive critique! Based on my favorite episode ever 😄
So, to start, I should probably say that I didn’t have the greatest childhood ever. My mom ended up dying of postpartum bleeding after I was born. I know, dying by childbirth in 1989 sounds like pretty shitty luck, but it happened. My dad had his own slew of health problems, from bipolar 1 (which I was lucky enough not to inherit), to type 1 diabetes, somnambulism, and an allergy to Ibuprofen (All of which I was unlucky enough to inherit).
For him, the real kicker came at 42. He was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and apparently it was severe. I was 23 when the diagnosis came, and had isolated myself from him almost entirely at that point.
For a while, I just ignored it, even when my cousins or Grandma would beg me to call him. I know it sounds harsh, but the guy did some really unspeakable things to me when I was younger, stuff I never told my family about because of all the trouble it would cause.
But I guess I'm a glutton for punishment deep down, because after about 4 years of this, I gave in and agreed to see him.
By then, it had wreaked havoc on his functioning. He was well and truly disabled, with advanced aphasia and near-complete paralysis. I’m no doctor, but the internet told me his level of paralysis was quite rare. I assumed it had been exacerbated by his lifestyle or the diabetes.
Despite the lack of real care he’d shown me growing up, something about watching how hard it was just for him to string a basic sentence together was heartbreaking. He needed live-in care at that point, and absolutely couldn’t afford it. I ended up volunteering and moved back in after 9 years of no contact.
Now I understand that I don’t really have the right to complain about how hard this is for me or whatever, since he’s the one actually going through it, but this is probably going to be something of an “off-my-chest” type post. The minutia of caring for the man is incredibly draining, and I essentially discarded my career and social life just to help him out.
The aphasia, in particular, took some time to learn how to navigate. One of the first things I read online about aphasia was the importance of patience, so I’ll try not to complain too much here. But imagine every little thing the man wanted or needed taking between 2 and 10 minutes to communicate. We did get better at it over time, developing shorthand for things like the TV guide, grocery lists, and other things he wanted to communicate with some regularity.
Eventually, I found an app that had a bunch of common phrases and words, which I got running on an old laptop that I sat in front of him. The paralysis left him almost completely immobile, but he was able to point his right finger with relative consistency. I would rest his hand on his armchair and pull up 8 options in the cardinal and ordinal directions, and he would move his finger if he wanted one of them.
If he wanted something else, he originally said “No.” But over time, even that took a minute or two to spool up, so I learned to use his eye movement. He would move them left and right rapidly, a facsimile of shaking his head no. It worked out well enough for us.
I used the same method with the TV guide, which was probably the thing we went through the most often outside basic functions. Luckily, he only wanted to watch 4 things most days. A politics, business, and morning show on a network I won’t specify, and some of the Adult Swim block on Cartoon Network. He used to like watching Robot Chicken and South Park (before they “became” liberal), but these days the only thing he wants to watch is this stupid show called “The Mr. Banana Activity Hour,” which is complete trash.
The basic premise of the show is that there’s an old man who sits on a rocking chair in his living room and falls asleep at the same time every day for about an hour before jolting back awake. During that time, the fruit in the fruit bowl comes to life and starts having insane manic adventures. It’s like if Toy Story met Superjail. Then, they all rush back into the bowl when the man wakes up, and the episode ends.
The show only lasts ten minutes, not even enough for a midpoint ad break. Now personally, I think any potential adult “humor” to be found from animated food was effectively blackbagged and executed by the likes of Sausage Party and Food Fight, but my dad watches this shit religiously. I even had to program his ancient VCR to record the damn thing every Wednesday night, just so he could watch it again until the next one comes out.
Even that wasn’t so bad. But after a few months of this, as if the producers themselves set out to spite me, the show somehow got picked up for a new episode every weekday. I can only assume the executives at Cartoon Network are operating with the same brainpower as the goddamn banana itself, because it’s practically sacrilege.
That was about two weeks ago, and my dad got even more obsessed with the show. I tried to put him to bed without it one night (Yes, I know treating a disabled man like a petulant child is fucked up, okay? But you have no idea how annoying this show is.) and he kept telling me to “eat shit” until I put it back on. It probably took him 3 minutes every time, and he was at it for hours.
I went on a few forums online to complain, and no one has even heard of this show. Everyone is treating me like some kind of nutjob or like I'm writing an ARG or something. I posted a picture of the TV guide, and half the comments were pointing out Photoshop artifacts that I swear they were making up.
So I decided, hey, my relationship with him has never been good, but maybe I should try and have some empathy. I realized that maybe he empathized with the stupid banana somehow, being unable to move and speak most of the time, and he was living vicariously through it. I thought there might be some subtext or something, so I caught an episode every now and then.
The first few I watched were uneventful garbage, the fruits getting themselves caught in the blender and pulverized, eaten by rats, etc. If it were actually animated like Superjail it might have been fun, but it was much more minimalistic. The daily episodes were probably just because it cost pennies to make.
One night, we were watching the season one finale, “Mr. Banana gives the old man the slip.” In it, the old man in the rocking chair stood up, still snoring comically, and started walking into the kitchen. The fruits all panicked, not having any idea what to do. They all tried to leap into the bowl, but Mr. Banana’s peel was on the kitchen floor because he had been mid-coitus at the time (godawful show).
The old man, I kid you not, slipped on the banana peel and fell. I turned to my dad, expecting to hear his usual laughter, but he was just staring at the TV with this odd expression on his face. He looked more stunned than anything. Granted, his expressions had gotten less… expressive, but I had gotten pretty good at reading him. The episode ended, and I moved him into his bed and went to sleep myself.
I woke up that night to this anguished crying, and when I found him, he was on the floor of his room in the fetal position. I had no idea how he could have possibly gotten out of bed, because he would've needed to have rolled off the far end from where he was sleeping. I assumed he was sleepwalking again, which normally presented itself when we were stressed, in our cases. When I got into the room and turned on the lights, he stopped making the noise and just stared at me, with that same intense expression.
I took him to the doctor for good measure, and it turned out the fall had actually fractured his hand. I was amazed he had even been able to try to catch himself with it. He didn’t wail or anything during the whole trip to the ER, just kept staring. The nurses kept shooting me funny looks as I explained what had happened, probably incensed that I didn’t prevent it, so I resolved to get a baby monitor with motion sensing for his bedroom.
The fracture had, of course, been in his right hand, rendering the finger method impossible for the time being. It looked almost as if he had landed directly on his right pointer with how localized the damage was. Communicating was even harder now, especially since he was always staring at me instead of at whatever words I was trying to get him to choose between. He didn’t even try to talk anymore, content to let me suffer as I tried to intuit what the hell his issue was.
Despite all the stress, I never really felt the need to escape the situation. I definitely could've, and it wasn't something I ever ruled out. But no matter how rough the night before was, I always woke up feeling refreshed, almost empowered. I assume that doing all this out of the goodness of my heart gave it some sort of internal purpose, something I got out of the experience that made it worth the pain.
I still put the show on, of course. I’m not a monster, and I felt guilty anyhow. I sat and watched that tripe with him for two more uneventful weeks. He got a little upset one night during a scene when Mr. Banana had gotten out some of the old man’s tools. When Mr. Banana picked up a hammer and accidentally flattened Mrs. Kiwi, he started making the wailing sounds again. I muted the show and desperately tried to figure out what was wrong.
I asked if he was hurting, needed the bathroom, needed food or water, or needed anything at all, to no response but more wailing. Eventually, I snapped and asked him if he wanted his own stupid hammer to play with, and was surprised when his eyes started rapidly darting up and down, our code for “yes.”
It was an answer, and I was tired, so I headed into the garage. There was a set of stairs down to his workshop that had been long inaccessible to him, but he had never indicated any need for any of his tools until now. I pulled on the lightbulb’s chain and was promptly greeted by a hammer-shaped hole in his wall of tools.
This pissed me off more than it should’ve. I couldn’t believe he was randomly choosing now to freak out about not having a hammer. It was probably missing before I even started taking care of him. Exasperated, I walked into the room and told him the news. He kept wailing, and I’m ashamed to say that after an hour or so, I just put him to bed and went to sleep, trying to ignore the noise from down the hall.
During last night's episode, “Mr. Banana Gets Curious,” the banana expressed a desire to know what being eaten felt like, and the show took on some existentialist themes. But oh-- don’t worry! They didn’t manage to do anything interesting at all with the concept.
The climax of the whole shabang was just Mr. Banana going halfway into the old man’s mouth while he slept, tucking himself into the lips like a blanket, before getting cold feet and choosing to go back to the bowl. Dad hated this episode and actually refused to be moved away from the TV to his bed after watching it. I decided to let him sleep in his armchair since he was being difficult, ate a small dinner, and went to bed.
This morning, he was a wreck, eyes red from crying and looking like he hadn't slept at all. He actually talked for the first time in weeks. “No. No boy. No boy,” he repeated over and over. Lovely. It felt great to know that my hard work was being appreciated.
I couldn’t even get him to use his eyes; he would just repeatedly flash them from side to side, an endless stream of No’s. I asked if he wanted help, and he finally gave me a yes. But when I ran a few options for how I could help him, it was straight back to “No boy.”
After what felt like twenty minutes of this, I asked if he wanted to talk to someone else. Another yes. “Phone.” A new word. These were exceedingly rare. He’d never asked to use the phone before, for somewhat obvious reasons. I tried to bypass having to input a number by going through his contacts, but this sent him right back to no mode. Finally, I gave in and asked if he had a number in mind. Yes.
“Fine, how about I count up, and you say when?” Yes. I started counting, slowly enough that he could interrupt me when he needed to. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.” Yesyesyes, his eyes flashed. This made sense. Our area code started with a 9. I probably could have assumed as much.
“Okay, second letter, one-” His eyes started darting up and down before I’d even finished. Easy enough. “Alright, one-” Again, his eyes interrupted me, flashing rapidly. “Ok, one, tw-”
“No!” This was emphatic, forceful. The most powerful sound he’d made in likely years.
“911? Is there an emergency?” I asked. Yesyesyes. The last time I’d known my dad to call 911, I was 19, and it ended with me receiving a notice to vacate. Not something I was eager to repeat. I asked him to tell me what the emergency was first.
“No boy!” he half-shouted. At this point, I was exasperated. I threw up my hands, put the phone back on the base, and just wheeled him into the living room.
He’s been there ever since, just repeating the same damn thing over and over again. I guess that’s probably the main reason I'm writing this post-- to ask for advice on what to do now. I know I should try to communicate better with him, but I’m nearing my breaking point. The man has sent my stress levels higher than they’ve been since childhood.
There’s one thing I’m taking solace in, stupid as it may be. I checked the TV guide this morning and saw some wonderful news. “Mr. Banana leaves the Bowl Behind,” is marked to air tonight, and it's meant to be the series finale! I'm sure my old man will be upset, but I know I'll sleep soundly with that shit behind me.