Why, Claire? Why?

It started out of the blue. Without warning.

I was driving around with my six-year-old, Claire.

Suddenly, she seemed to remember something. Something that disturbed her.

She rolled the window down...

And then, without any explanation, yelled:

That's right: You owe me a banana.
Punk.

I was like, "What the heck, Claire! What are you saying?"...

But she just laughed and laughed.

Then, whenever the car got close to someone, she would get serious and yell it again: "You owe me a banana, punk!"

She shouted at joggers.

She tried to collect from parents and kids.

She even accused a cop of owing her this alleged banana.

This went on for several days, whenever I forgot to lock Claire's car window. And my eight-year-old, Kate, was no help at all. She would notice that we were driving up to someone and shout, "Claire! Doesn't that person owe you a banana??"

Indeed they did.



Thankfully, the whole thing has pretty much died down. But a few times a week, Claire will get that look...



... and I know she's going to try and collect on the damn banana.

Personally, I don't believe anyone owes her any fruit. So I will continue to thwart her attempts to yell at innocent bystanders.

But who knows? Maybe one of these days I'll be proven wrong.