In the event of nuclear war or some other general catastrophe, don’t be in downtown Chicago. I can say this through observation of the fruit salad bin in the Plaza Market on Wabash Avenue.
Evidentiary Case No. 1: Arriving perhaps 15 minutes later than my normal time, I observed a young man carefully fishing out all of the grapefruit pieces from the fruit salad, leaving none for the rest of us. If we all did that, the offering in the bin would cease to be a salad, because salad is a combination of fruits; it isn’t, say, all melon. That would make it a bin of melon. Too, sour grapefruit makes a perfect foil for, say, the grapes.
Evidentiary Case No. 2: Arriving perhaps 30 minutes later than my normal time, I observed a middle-age woman fishing out all the grapes. By the way, the grapefruit was all gone too.
If this kind of rampant me-first thoughtlessness is this bad now, can you imagine how bad things would be if our lives depended on it? Don’t say you weren’t warned; fruit doesn’t lie.