“Hello?”

“Hey, man.”

“Hey, bud. What’s up?”

“Nothing. So, tell me this, what’s something you’d eat when you’re hungry?”

“Did you really call to ask me this? I’m at work?”

“Yes, but I am also trying to make a point.”

“Which is?”

“Well, first, tell me. What do you eat when you’re hungry?”

“Fuck, dude. Food. I eat food when I’m hungry.”

“Do you eat a meal?”

“Sure.”

“Always? You always eat a full meal every time you’re hungry?”

“Or a fucking snack. I eat a meal or a snack when I’m hungry. Have we gotten to the bottom of this great mystery?”

“Would you eat a banana?”

“Sure.”

“The whole thing?”

“What?”

“If you were hungry and you chose to have a banana, would you eat the entire banana?”

“Yes. Dude, what the fuck are you talking about?”

“That. Exactly what you just confirmed. You’d eat the entire banana if you were hungry.”

“I guess.”

“If you were hungry, would you ever eat half a banana?”

“I doubt it. Who the fuck eats half a banana?”

“Precisely. And, to answer your question, apparently my wife eats half of a banana.”

“As opposed to eating the entire banana?”

“Correct.”

“Why?”

“She claims that is all she wants.”

“So, she acknowledges that she is hungry, but then also acknowledges her hunger is relieved by half a banana?”

“Now you understand.”

“How can that be? Like, a banana doesn’t really even help if you’re hungry. You’d need like five bananas. You eat a banana before a run or if you need something else after breakfast. You can’t eat a banana as the primary food source.”

“Preaching to the choir. This was the subject of my wife and I’s latest argument. There was one banana left in the house and we both wanted it. I agreed to give it to her because I was leaving and could pick something up. She then cuts it in half and offers the other half to me. Her explanation is that she just, ‘needed a little something’.”

“That is completely illogical.”

“I agree and I tell her as much. I explain that if you only want half a banana, then you aren’t really hungry. I mean, as humans, we are always capable of eating. You can always eat something even if you aren’t actually hungry at that moment. But, you can’t claim to be hungry and also claim that half a banana will relieve you.”

“Agreed. It’s like saying you need to sweat and then going for a quarter mile run. There’s no way that’d do the job. Odds are, you didn’t need to sweat all that bad.”

“Exactly. And, now you understand my frustration and the crux of our argument.”

“How was it resolved?”

“It wasn’t really. As I mentioned, I was going to the store. I ended up buying three bunches of bananas. When I got home, I cut them all in half so that she’d have appropriately sized snacks.”

“How did that go over?”

“It hasn’t yet. That was late yesterday afternoon and she hasn’t spoken to me sense.”

“Well, sometimes you just need to put your foot down.”

“My thoughts exactly”.