Banana Show

So I'm at work, minding my own business, typing away when I hear my director telling my boss that he's going to go to Amsterdam. My half-height cubicle is on a major thoroughfare and people are always walking by. I tipped my head up and raised an eyebrow asking, "Why do you have to go to Amsterdam?"

Amsterdam is excellent fodder for low-brow jokes, so I was kind of expecting a wisecrack as he walked by, but instead he stopped and asked me, "You've been to Amsterdam?"

I sit on a well-traveled aisle, so I get a lot of people passing through. I really wasn't expecting a conversation, but I told him what I tell everybody (nobody believes me), that if you're going to Amsterdam, you should stay in Haarlem. It's a beautiful, quiet Dutch town with a great cathedral in it, and it's a great place to retreat to when you're done hanging out in the business of Amsterdam. He countered that he preferred staying in Amsterdam so he could stumble back to the hotel drunk without having to take a train. Somebody finally brought up the red light district (as people are inexorably drawn to do).

"Yeah, I've been to the red light district," I said," Everybody should walk through there at least once. It's a surreal experience." Then I added, "I didn't get a chance to see the Banana Show, though," chuckling at what was basically an inside joke. When I was walking through the red light district, there were a bunch of signs directing you to the "Banana Show", which I had no desire to see, but the idea struck me as hilarious.

The director stared at me, shocked. For a brief, terrifying instant I thought I'd gone too far. My workplace is pretty laid back, but I thought maybe I'd crossed the line and the director was going to rebuke me for my offensive speech.

Instead he looked me in the eye accusingly and said, "Who told you about that?" Then he turned to my boss. "I can't believe you told him about the Banana Show!"

"What? What Banana Show?!?" we both asked in unison, genuinely confused.

He wasn't buying it. "I can't believe you told him that story! You told him about the Banana Show!" The confused look on our faces remained, and finally he started to walk away, unsure of what to believe.

I'll probably never know what that was all about. I'm probably better off not knowing.