Orange

 

The young weekend man on the checkout turns it disapprovingly in his hands and tells her that the fruit she has selected has a great big hole in one end. Now she regrets choosing the 30p orange and wishes she had gone for the two bags of four, presumably without holes, for three pounds - an option she had rejected because of the extra weight to carry home. What use the bargain if there were then no room for the toilet paper she had come to the shops for? Dismay at having chosen less than brightly, at being exposed as the old lady who should know better but has failed to pick a blemish-free example of the citrus from a mound of otherwise acceptable fruit, turns to relief as she looks more closely and sees there is no fault in the orange, no dent in the rind, no softening of decay. She explains that the navel orange has no seeds and that this is a baby orange growing out of the base of the fruit and that this is how the tree propagates itself. She senses that she is talking herself into deep orange water now and she needs to escape before the young man can challenge the logic of what she has told him. She packs up the rest of her groceries and the toilet paper, for which there is enough room in the bag, and she tells him sharply that obviously he cannot be in the habit of eating sufficient fruit. Or else he would have known.