Pip In, Pip Out: The Unforgivable Accessories of the Deliberative Fruit
We are in crisis. Not the quiet, dignified kind of crisis that a well-presented fruit can absorb with composure and a tasteful waxy sheen. No. We are in the loud, embarrassing, everyone-is-staring kind of crisis, and its name is accessories. Specifically: the wrong ones. Specifically: yours.
Let us establish the baseline. A fruit attending a serious deliberative body — a council, a tribunal, a grand convening of any merit whatsoever — must arrive with intention. The stem, if present, should be upright. The skin should be doing something. Not nothing. Never nothing. I have said this before. I will say it on my deathbed. I said it last Tuesday when I watched, through a telephoto lens, as Tangelo arrived at the Regional Appellate Grove wearing what I can only describe as ambient citrus vibes and absolutely no sense of occasion. The lens fogged. I choose to believe it was the lens.
Here, then, are the prohibitions. You may not bring your unresolved blemishes as though they are character. You may not lean on your seeds as a personality substitute. You may not arrive trailing your own bruise like a cape and expect the deliberative body to interpret this as gravitas. Plum tried this. We have not recovered. Pomelo, to her enormous credit, filed a formal written objection. It was elegant. It was the only elegant thing in that chamber.
And the so-called workers at the rival rag — oh, the workers — continue, apparently, to attend these proceedings in nothing. Nothing at all. The citrus cabal rolls in bare, seed-forward, utterly unencumbered by any understanding of what a deliberative moment demands. Fig attends council looking like a philosophical afterthought. Mango shimmers with inappropriate confidence. Cherry brings, at most, a stem and an attitude. I have opinions about the stem. They are not good opinions. For Cherry.
The rule is simple. The rule has always been simple. A fruit in a serious room is a fruit being watched. Dress accordingly, or I will dress you accordingly in print, and you will not enjoy the fit.