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.