Lieutenant Commander Banana Clip

I saw this on Totally Looks Like the other day, and it certainly brought back a few repressed memories.  When I was a kid, I definitely wore a banana clip pretending to be Geordi LaForge, and my family wasn't even big Star Trek fans.  How many people in the U.S. wore banana clips over their eyes pretending to be Lieutenant Commander Geordi LaForge?

Apparently, I was not alone.  It strikes me that role playing as Geordi takes three things: a certain level of maturity, Star Trek knowledge, and banana clips.  I chose the phrase "a certain level of maturity" carefully.  I'm pretty sure most 2-year olds and 90-year olds didn't do this.  You need just the right amount of maturity.  With too much, you just think it's silly.  With too little, you can't see how genius the banana clip Geordi visor really is.  I suspect about 1/3 of the population has the appropriate maturity level. 

After maturity, you need Star Trek knowledge.  As I said earlier, I wasn't even that big of a Star Trek fan, but I still rocked the Geordi visor.  That said, I suspect at least 1 out of 10 people had my level of Star Trek knowledge. 

The final ingredient is, of course, banana clips.  These were fairly ubiquitous in the late 80s and early 90s when Star Trek the Next Generation was popular.  As a reasonable guess, I would say at least at least 1 out of 10 people had access to banana clips at this time.

Using the assumptions above, we can estimate that about 1 out of every 300 Americans, or about one-million people pulled off the Geordi look.  LeVar Burton, you deserve a commission from the banana clip companies.

[1] Doh!  "Jordi LaForge" should be spelled "Geordi La Forge."  Thank you, to my student Kara Kundert for the correction!