Bananas scare mum Fran Dando so much that just looking at them makes her hyperventilate, sweat and throw up.
If Dando spots bananas in the fruit bowl at a friend’s house she has to leave the room while the offending yellow fruit is removed. A trip to the supermarket installs so much banana fear in the young mum, she dreads going shopping.
“I generally do not explain my banana fear unless a situation comes up,” said Dando.
“Then I will say: ‘Sorry I am going to have to leave the room’, and then come back and tell them why.”
Unfortunately for Dando, her two-year-old son loves bananas.
“I have to use a blanket to pick them up and put them in the trolley and then when I am at home I have to wear rubber gloves and use a tea towel to open one and give it to him,” said Dando.
Dando, who is one of the world’s only bananaphobics (which is, of course, a medically recognised condition and not just a self-indulgent ‘quirk’) believes her banana phobia began when she was seven and her brother put a banana in her bed as a joke.
“I felt this horrible, slimy thing underneath my body. I was frozen in panic and hyperventilating. Ever since then, if I see one the same feeling comes back,” said banana-hating Dando.
What would Freud say we wonder?
