Mandarin Grapefruits

A grapefruit planted its seeds in China, hoping that its children would become mandarin grapefruits.

Like all good fruits, the grapefruit wanted the best for its children. It knew that mandarin oranges were among the most popular fruits, and it hypothesized that mandarin grapefruits would also be popular.

Many years passed, and almost all of the grapefruit's seeds remained dormant, afraid that they would grow into bitter grapefruit trees. However, one seed was bitterblind.

Bitterblindness is a condition that prevents one from sensing bitterness. Just as colorblindness would prevent a grapefruit seed from perceiving colors, bitterblindness prevented the little grapefruit seed from perceiving bitterness.

The bitterblind seed woke up from its dormancy and grew into a large grapefruit tree. Its fruits were bitter and never attained the popularity of mandarin oranges, but as a gesture of love and respect toward their parent grapefruit, the bitter fruits of the tree only referred to themselves as mandarin grapefruits, and never just as grapefruits.

Their parent grapefruit never knew about any of this because it was in the special place where grapefruits go after living a good life. It would have been proud.

Kissing

Two grapefruits were in love, so they decided to kiss each other.

The problem was that they tended to roll away from each other, due to each other's bitterness. But they truly loved each other, despite the fact that they were grapefruits.

Finally they realized that the only way to kiss each other was if one of them cornered the other in a spot where it couldn't roll away. The idea was a stroke of genius, and they have been kissing each other ever since.

Remove Grapefruits from your Diet

One of the best ways to keep yourself from becoming bitter is to remove all grapefruits from your diet.

The grapefruit is the number one leading cause of bitterness among adults aged 18-65. Children under 18 are all sweet, so they were not included in the study. Adults 65 years of age and beyond are also sweet.

Common sense will tell you that adults aged 18-65 must be eating too much grapefruit. That demographic probably includes you, so I'm going to go ahead and lecture you. Whether it's juice, extract, pills, or the fruit itself, you really should try to keep grapefruit out of your system if you don't want to be bitter.

Once I was bitter. Now I am sweet, and I am much happier this way. Trust me, because I'm sweet and because I'm right.

Flat and Fat

A flat grapefruit was sitting on an old, peeling bench at a bus stop. It was lost in thought until a fat grapefruit rolled into the space beside it.

Suddenly the flat grapefruit had an idea. "Excuse me, fat grapefruit, but could I have some of your volume?" it asked. "I'm pretty flat."

"I wish I could give you some," the fat grapefruit replied. "But unfortunately I'm on my way to a worldwide conference of fat grapefruits."

"Oh, I understand," the flat grapefruit said.

Soon the bus arrived. The flat grapefruit rolled onto the bus, like a wheel. The fat grapefruit also rolled onto the bus, but like a big rolling ball.

The flat grapefruit had been planning to get off the bus somewhere toward the end of the route. But it saw the fat grapefruit getting off at the convention center, and in a spur-of-the-moment decision it rolled off the bus too.

The fat grapefruit ignored the flat grapefruit, nervous that it would ask for some of its volume again.

The flat grapefruit also ignored the fat grapefruit, instead seeking help from crowds of fat grapefruits at the convention. It found a thousand fat grapefruits who were each willing to donate a single piece of pulp, and with the donations, it was easily admitted to the convention because it now met the volume requirement.

Overdose of Bitterness

A grapefruit was in the emergency room. It had accidentally fallen into a pot of coffee. The main problem was not the temperature of the coffee; rather, it was that the grapefruit had overdosed on bitterness.

The doctors were unable to save the grapefruit. It had gone well beyond the acceptable threshold of bitterness, and now it was too late.