If you go to the grocery store and want to buy two oranges, they’ll let you buy two oranges. Of if you only want to buy one grapefruit, you can buy just one grapefruit. But you can’t buy just one or two tangerines. You have to buy a half bushel, or how many ever comes in a five-pound bag.
I was in the store recently and really didn’t need a tree-full of tangerines. I tried to get another customer to split a bag with me, but we figured the bar codes would work against us and “Help Would be On the Way”.
Thirty-six is a lot of tangerines, or mandarins, or whatever they are, even if you’re a tangerine lover. If you eat two every day it will take you two or three weeks to finish off one bag – and then you’ll have mouth sores for the next three months.
Funny, they don’t call them tangerines anymore, they call them Cuties, which is a brand name for a specific, easy-to-peek mandarin-type citrus fruit. They are small, seedless and generally very sweet.
And that’s a good thing, because if you buy tangerines, you’ll be eating them for quite a while.
