Fic: Possibilities, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bananas 1/2

Title: Possibilities, or : How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bananas

Characters: Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith, Jake Simmonds, Pete Tyler, Jackie Tyler, Original Character Tyler, and a large number of bananas.

Rating: Teen

Disclaimer: None of these good people belong to me.

Beta: The unparalleled jlrpuck, who is entirely to blame. For everything.

Spoilers: Doomsday and naught else.

Summary: Rose Tyler lives the life fantastic, her feet on the ground and her head in the stars. A Pete's World fic. With bananas.

Author's Note: As jlrpuck reminded me this morning, it's been eight months since we entered into a small wager, the terms of which were as follows: A Moonstruck mocha--or a ficlet--says you can't write a fic of moderate length, centered around a banana, that is completely innuendo free. Eight months or no, the second half of the fic is still not quite complete. Yet I have decided - against my better judgment, oh yes - to post this first chapter as a public declaration of my commitment to its speedy completion.

Also, I can't think of a more appropriate day than April Fool's to share this bit of strangeness.

( Possibilities, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bananas )

bill was right. they really do say the darndest things.

In the middle of heated game of Old Maid (which, I'm only just now realizing, is rather brutally apropos to the subject at hand), five-year-old Chloe turns to me and says, "You know, when you're a grandma, you won't be a babysitter anymore."

I consider this for a moment, admittedly somewhat bewildered. We'd been discussing grandparents not long before, so the comment wasn't totally out of the blue, but I couldn't quite follow her logic. After all, I know for a fact that her family's backup sitter is an elderly neighbor. Eventually, I decide on a noncommittal,  "Probably not." We continue the game.

Not long after I find myself stuck with the Old Maid card yet again, I say, "It's possible, Chloe, that I might not ever be a grandma."

She smiles at me - the sort of smile I get from kids when I try to convince them that elephants sleep in trees or that the moon is made from recycled styrofoam cups. The "Oh, you silly grown up" smile. "Nuh uh," she says, the very picture of authority. "You'll be a mom, and your kid will be a mom, and then you'll be a grandmom."

"Well, that's how these things usually work," I agree. "But what if I don't become a mom?"

She thinks about this for a long moment. "You're right," she says finally. "You might die first."