The clementini have arrived

I was disproportionately excited yesterday to see that the clementini have arrived at Safeway. I loved them so much when I lived in Italy, but they taste different here. I think it's the long slog from Spain or wherever it is that they're grown. Plus, Safeway only sells them in crates, so you end up buying roughly a billion of them, half of which are about to re-join the great circle of life and become compost. Not to mention that they're ridiculously overpriced since they're considered imported goods.

Yet every year I fall victim to their lure. They always remind me of being a student in Bologna. Specifically, I think of the basement of our library, where there was a huge table for studying. I remember holing up down there to read between classes, but too often I'd nod off over my hated macroeconomics textbook, waking up with a start and furtively looking around only to see half the other students were asleep too. We all ate the clementini to ward off the colds that were constantly being passed around our incestuous social circles that winter. Plus, there they were dirt cheap - an attractive option to eternally broke students. When I smell that orange scent, I think of being warm and sleepy and right where I want to be.