Don’t worry; there are no bananas hurtling through the air. This is one of the classic examples of “garden path sentences”—sentences that make you do a double-take because your interpretation of the grammar changes halfway through. They make a sudden, unexpected turn, apparently rather like paths in a garden. In this case, you think we’re being philosophical, musing about the passage of time, but then a swarm of fruit flies jumps into the mix somehow, and it just so happens that they have a thing for an overripe tropical fruit.

Another one is “the old man the boat.”

“Huh!?” you say, until you realize that it means that elderly people comprise the staff of a particular vessel.

I am wondering if life is sometimes like a garden path sentence: if there are times when we need to change our interpretation halfway through. Sometimes we’re going along, confident in where we’re headed, when suddenly a monkey wrench tumbles in and the meaning changes. What happens if we refuse to reinterpret? What is the danger of ignoring the turn in the garden path of life and barreling headfirst into the bushes?