Today We Will Retire Yet Another Fruit That Is So Obviously Only Enjoyed By Old People
January 24th, 2007
Welcome to the premiere edition of WFME’s Fruit Retirement 2007!
That’s where we take a look at the fruit landscape (or frandscape as we have dubbed it) and retire a fruit that we feel is only enjoyed by old people (i.e. prunes and prune juice) and thus is never consumed by the younger set of society, and therefore must be retired, removed and completely eradicated from the landscuit (our other way of dubbing the fruit landscape in clever word rearrangement).
Today, that fruit is the grapefruit.
Mention grapefruit to most people under the age of 65 and they’ll hurl a laundry list of adjectives at you, in regards to the oval, yellowish monster. Words like: sour, noxious, acidic, madness-inducing, and angry all usually come fast and furious. Mention grapefruit to people over 65 and prepare yourself for a fruit that is considered (among AARP members) to be: gloriously refreshing, a negative calorie fruit, filled with the hopes and dreams of a thousand crushed lifetimes and tangy!
Is there any more reason to not retire that bastard grapefruit right here…and right now?
If you’ve got to put SUGAR on a fruit to make it taste edible…that my friends is not a fruit I want in my refrigerator’s fruit crisper. If you’ve got to manufacture special spoons with ridges on the edge JUST TO EAT the troublemakers…that is a fruit that does not deserve my attention. If you’ve got to combine said juice of said fruit with other juices just to make selling said juice in a bottle (read: Ruby Red Grapefruit juice) something that the public will consider edible…
That’s a fruit you’ll want to retire from society.
And couple the fact that a grapefruit needs sugar to taste better, needs tools in order to just eat the damn things, and is dependent on some really clever marketing and advertising by food companies with the fact that old people over the age of 65 absolutely sing the praises of the grapefruit as the next best thing to prunes…
And. Well. There’s a six-letter word that happens to contain three consonants and three vowels and starts with an R and ends in an E and uses the letters E, T, I, and R in between them…that’s the word I’m going to use right this minute.
Retire.
If you really think about it, the world will be a much less sour, much less stringy, much less annoying place with the retirement of grapefruits. If you really take the time to think constructively, you’ll also realize that while we’re carting and shipping off all our nasty grapefruits to third world countries that might want them, we should also ship off all the old folks who love the damn things. If you really sit down, take a look at the fruit landscape, and realize just how many fruits there are out there for consumption — you’ll realize that eviscerating a few in the process won’t really have any affect on the world of fruit.
So with that being said, let this post be our officially announcement that as of today…the grapefruit has been retired. Move on to the apple or the orange or the banana. Or the pineapple or the melon or the kiwi. Just stay away from the grapefruit. Okay?
You’ll be glad you did.
You are grapefruitaphobic, aren’t you? And your irrational hatred of the fruit makes you agist as well.
In Defense of Grapefruit and Old People
1) Their arthritic hands cannot successfully manage any fruit smaller than a softball
2) Their tastebuds no longer distinguish sugary and sweet and as such this “sour” as you call it is about all they can taste anymore
3) The juicy, pulpy bits are easier to gum than apples and some other youthful fruits
4) The acidity of grapefruit tends to rip through their systems within an hour. This thorough cleansing empties them out before they head out for a day of holding up traffic and shopping lines and protects them from accidents while in traffic or at the store
5) Grapefruits grow in abundance in the climates to which the elderly retire and therefore are relatively cheaper than other fruits helping them exist on a fixed income. They are also helping that local economy buy buying exclusively the grapefruit leaving all that youthful fruit for non seniors who are a bunch of agist, grapefruitophobes.
Comment by Jerry — January 24, 2007 @ 12:45 pm
oh no you di’int just dis my most favorite fruit ever, my daily staple, my true citric love. i, sir, am under 65, i don’t put anything on my grapefruit to sweeten it, and i have a wonderful collection of special spoons in my quiver. i’m guessing my blood sugar levels are more stable than those of you brown-spotted banana lovers, and you will all go to an early grave for some kind of disease or another.
go ahead and retire the hell out of the yellow grapefruit, but you will have to pry the last of the texas rios from my cold, dead hands.
harrumph. [slams door]
Comment by dgm — January 24, 2007 @ 1:20 pm
Isn’t there an old saying about this?
“Every time a grapefruit is eaten, a puppy dies.”
Tangy bastards.
Comment by Jan — January 24, 2007 @ 1:53 pm
It’s the spiked edged spoons stashed in their overfilled silverware drawer. Besides doing nothing for the appetite, they’re a pain in the ass to eat.
Comment by christie — January 24, 2007 @ 3:56 pm
But my grandfather *loves* grapefruit… poor man…
I do leave in one of those “third world countries that might want them” though, so if you start shipping off old folks who love grapefruit my grandfather might gain some new friends…
Comment by Hana — January 24, 2007 @ 4:27 pm
er… leave = live…
sorry..
Comment by Hana — January 24, 2007 @ 4:31 pm
Yeah, let’s make all the old people swim back to Florida with a mean spirited punk - and his friends, under each arm… while there is still time
Comment by Dan Day Afterthought — January 24, 2007 @ 5:19 pm
Starfruit is so hip right now.
Comment by Kathleen — January 24, 2007 @ 6:16 pm
You are a very bad man, Mr. Paul Davidson. A very bad man indeed.
If you are going to curse a fruit, make it the kumquat. Good lord. The very name is offensive.
Grapefruits are your friend. Perhaps you need some couples counseling to work on your relationship. Communication is key.
Squish.
Comment by Jennifer Lankenau — January 24, 2007 @ 9:32 pm
Ok, first of all, I agree with you on retiring the grapefruit. It’s long overdue and I applaud you in your initiative.
My first id word for grapefruit is bitter. Ech.
Second…. how is it that I can comment on someone’s blog that Kohl’s sucks because the only womens clothes they have are either old ladyish and/or cheap looking, cheaply constructed juniors, and I pretty much offend everyone that reads that blog
(I’m going to put a space here to give your eyes a break on this crazy run on sentence)
and then you, you boldly get on your blog, stating we need to ship off grapefuit loving old folks to a third world country, and not only is nobody offended, but instead we are LOLBNRLOLMLSTO.
You’re my American Idol Pauly.
Comment by jacquie — January 25, 2007 @ 5:25 am
Ok, just for the sake of being annoying; there’s actually quite a lot of old people who cannot have grapefruit (like my grandad) because of a certain kind of medicine they have to take.
I think. Maybe my grandad is just refusing to acknowledge he’s old and hiding it behind a facade of real-excuseness.
Comment by Merel — January 25, 2007 @ 5:38 am
Jacquie - LOLRHRAN!
Merel - Here’s a little tidbit of interesting trivia. My grandfather once told me that all of his buddies down at the retirement home clubhouse would exclaim over and over again to family members that they would die if they ate grapefruit (because of the medicine they were taking) but in reality they were saying such things to add an aire of “fear” about the grapefruit so, as he put it, “there would be more grapefruit to go around for us old folks.”
Always a story behind the story, I’m afraid.
Comment by Pauly D — January 25, 2007 @ 7:13 am
Clearly you do not understand the epicurian delight that is grapefruit. Two things should be made abundantly clear:
1. Only HEATHENS put sugar on their grapefruit.
2. Without grapefruit, no ’salty dogs’. I shudder to think.
Comment by Odie — January 25, 2007 @ 7:14 am
I’ve disagreed with your view many times, Mr. Davidson, but never as strongly as today. Grapefruits are the best. But maybe I just have an old soul.
Comment by Neil — January 25, 2007 @ 8:57 am
I began reading this with the intention of disagreeing with you but — damnit man — your irrefutable logic has won me over.
I can remember my mom serving grapefruit every holiday. It took her a solid hour just to cut the edges around each of the slices. The fruit was then covered in some sort of sickeningly sweet jelly — marmalade I think — then dusted with sugar, THEN BAKED.
This protracted process resulted in a dish that was…fine. The top was nice and sweet, the bottom was sour as hell.
Retire it.
(Although I do enjoy a greyhound now and again).
Comment by Dickard — November 30, 2007 @ 8:49 am