Leaked Emails Present Swedish Minister’s Distinctive Worry of Bananas

Worry is an elemental a part of the human situation. Everyone is afraid of one thing. Properly, truly, that’s not fairly true. Everyone…except for Chuck Norris, who’s much less a flesh-and-blood mortal and extra a crime-fighting demigod in human kind. Chuck Norris was despatched to the corporeal realm for the specific function of reaping vengeance upon the sinful and the depraved and so, if there may be one factor that you just ought to be afraid of, it’s in all probability Chuck Norris. Anyway, my general level is that persons are afraid of issues, and one of many weirder issues that persons are afraid of is bananas.

Contemporary proof of this was supplied by Politico this week, which reported on a batch of leaked emails exhibiting a European bureaucrat’s efforts to rid her skilled areas of the dreaded yellow fruit. Based on the leaked emails, the federal government places of work the place Swedish Gender Equality Minister Paulina Brandberg seems should be banana-free, in order to accommodate her uncommon phobia.

The emails are from Brandberg’s crew to a number of completely different public companies, in preparation for varied conferences.

“Paulina Brandberg has a powerful allergy to bananas, so it could be appreciated that there aren’t any bananas within the areas the place she will probably be staying,” one of many emails, which was despatched to the Norwegian Judicial Company previous to a scheduled assembly, acknowledged. Different emails have been addressed to a rustic administrative board (her crew requested that “no bananas are allowed on the premises”) and even to Swedish Parliament Speaker Andreas Norlén (officers once more requested that “no traces of bananas” seem throughout one other assembly with Brandberg).

It seems that Brandberg is just not actually allergic to the fruit, nonetheless. “It’s kind of an allergy, you may say,” Brandberg instructed Swedish tabloid Expressen this week. She additionally famous that the banana concern is “one thing that” she will get “skilled assist with.”

Politico additional notes that in a sequence of now-deleted posts on X, Brandberg publicly admitted to her concern of the fruit. “I’ve a phobia of bananas,” Brandberg wrote in 2020, apparently including that it was the “world’s craziest phobia.”

I don’t know if it’s the bar-none craziest phobia I’ve ever heard of (some persons are deathly afraid of peanut butter and a few are terrified of human knees), however absolutely it’s excessive on the listing. Bananas aren’t scary, they’re simply gross and annoying. It’s important to eat them in a day or they flip the colour of poop and shrivel up and soften within the noon solar. Or, you permit one in your backpack with the intention of consuming it as a day snack, solely to overlook about it and discover it per week later smushed throughout your laptop computer case.

Brandberg isn’t alone. Numerous individuals concern bananas. One girl has described them as “stringy, bitty, mushy frauds masquerading in yellow jackets,” the odor, sound, and look of which ship shivers down her backbone.