I just read through the “hit the ground running” post and a question posed to me by a close friend came to mind.
When and why did bananas become a metaphor for insanity?
My friend deduced that the banana is the oddest shaped fruit and therefore is different. Hmmmm.
Anyone?
I don’t know if that’s true, but it has a certain ap-peel.
Sorry. Couldn’t resist.
blessedwolf - Be careful. That’s a slippery slope.
Could it have something to do with the monkey-banana relationship? Everyone knows monkeys are crazy. Bananas are crazy by association.
Not monkey, APE. As in going ape for bananas.
The very word is the reason, I think. It sounds like a nonsense word in the vein of ‘doolally’ and ‘wacky’ etc, which aren’t real words at all, but still refer to the effect of being ‘nuts’.
Let’s quit monkeying around here, many words sound crazier than bananas. Zenster sounds closest in suggesting “going ape for bananas” but I swear that the phrase I have heard is “going bananas” Doesn’t sound right Zen.
Banana oil is old slang for nonsense or foolishness.
A bananahead is a stupid person.
The Wordsworth Book of Euphemism says
A Bananalander is a person who lives in Queensland. It’s obvious to me that only an insane person would want to live there. 
I was told by a person who had served in India during WWII that going doollally was a term that was coined by troops stationed over there.
The full term was “To be tapped with the Dolali hammer” meaning to go slightly mad.
He claimed it was a referance to a large military camp where soldiers ended up with a mental institution there.
When I visited India myself I went to Bombay and was assured that there was a place of that name in the area(since India is huge I took that with a pinch of salt) and that it had been a British army depot.
This could all be total tosh so if you know more I’d appreciate the telling.
And “going doollally” has to with bananas how?