I had a tough mandarin to crack, so grandson David started it for me. He often peels his in a circular way, ending with one spiral piece. I said I would do it that way because he gave me a good start. As he peeled his, he said, “Cousin Anders is awesome at this. You should see him do it.”

After I ate the innards, I put the shell back together, not terribly successfully. Now David is really good at balancing things and fitting pieces together. His fingers are calibrated to a finer precision than mine. Can you see that his rind is smirking right into his hand? Mine turned its back and had a squinty-eyed scowl.

Thank heavens we quit when we did. If we’d squeezed them to make them talk, who knows to what silly depths we would have fallen.