"We don't have any," he replied. "We'll be getting some in tomorrow."

It took me a few moments to absorb this information. "What do you mean you don't have any?" I thought. "Every store has bananas." True, sometimes they are almost green enough to pass for bent cucumbers. And they occasionally appear to have lost an arm-wrestling match with a watermelon. But there are always bananas of some sort in store.

Then it dawned on me just how foolish my expectations were. I live well north of New York City. Even if somebody invented a way to cultivate them in Great White North, it was early April, and they would not bear fruit at that time of year. For goodness sake, outside snow was falling and inside I was expecting tropical bananas!

If you commute in a big city, you might have noticed traffic grinding to a halt. Why? Look to bananas for answer. Just as I was frustrated by my grocery expectations not being met, millions of commuters are frustrated daily by their traffic expectations not being met.

Consider some of major machines in your life, such as television. Twenty years ago, we would watch a TV show. Ads would come and ads would go, but we would watch it from start to finish. Who does that these days?

"What were you watching, honey?"

"I dunno. But I think I caught 412 channels."

First, we'd have a choice of two brands of everything. Instead of dozens or even hundreds as we do now. Want soup, it's either brand A. or brand B. Need a new car, again, A. or B. (feel free to substitute IE for brand A. and N for brand B.)

Sure sounds like things would be simpler, and if things went as they should, both A. and B. brands would be doing everything in their power to make their product/services better and less expensive then other guy. WOW! Can you imagine, a gas war over everything. (For those readers who have never experienced a gas war, it was when 1 gas station dropped it's price to 40 cents per gallon which was 2 cents less than station across street. The station across street then went to 38 cents. This went on until we were buying gas for 20 cents per gallon)

Some other very interesting side effects would also occur.

1. If you received a phone call you hadn't requested, you could notify phone spam police and they would disconnect offending callers telephone.

2. If you opened your snail mail box to find anything addressed to occupant you would be entitled to $50.00 per piece of offending mail to be paid by your postal delivery person.