A youthful ferret, around six and a quarter feet tall, casually cleaned his glasses on the end of his black shirt. After putting them back in their proper position on his nose, he took a seat at a round, wooden table. He glanced across it with a sideways smile on his face.

"Hey there," he said to the person sitting opposite him. "What's up?"

Moments later he added, "Ah. Really? ...Well, cool. Anyways, I brought you here today because I wanted to tell you a little story. Well, not exactly a /little/ one. It's rather big, actually. You know, they just grow up so fa--" The ferret coughed. "Sorry. I have a little trouble staying focused. Now, I could understand if you aren't interested in hearing this story. After all, it would take up such an incredible portion of your life you could be spending admiring nature, saving the rain forest, and striving for world peace, but... You know you'd rather do something that takes less effort on your part. Besides that, I can ensure you'll enjoy it. How? 'Cause I'm one bad son of a storyteller."

"...You're still here? Excellent. I see my statements of boastful awesomeness are effective indeed. Well, then. Grab yourself a nice cup of tea to sip on and I'll get started. ...Maybe you should also grab a sandwich. I wouldn't put mayonnaise on it, though. It's a little on the unhealthy side."

The ferret laid his arms out on the table and began tailing his tell. Telling his tale. Whatever.

Now, where was I? Oh, yeah. The story. This is just a little tale about a street. This street was in the middle of some non-specific Californian city, but suffered very little from the typical urban traffic congestion. The city designer must've stumbled upon the formula for urban traffic cold medicine to accomplish such a feat, for nothing else could have created such a pedestrian's utopia: everything one could ever need was within walking distance from one's house; it was just around the corner and no more than a couple blocks away. This, and the fact that the road was a dead end nobody ever needed to drive to, eliminated the automobile traffic down there altogether. Sure, the occasional confused tourist would stop by, but, for the most part, the only mode of transportation on this street were the shoes of the proletariat. Er, I mean-- the shoes of the people who lived there.

Speaking of which, all ten of the buildings in the area were residential. They weren't apartments or even family homes; they were just minute dwellings with a small flock of young tenants per building. It probably seems a little odd to you, I know. What are a bunch of scruffy late-teenagers doing living away from their parents? Well, you've gotta look at it a certain way. This society's a little... less loving than what you may be used to. It all started this one time a while ago. Some teenager just totally blew off his or her parent, parents, or parental guardian(s) and basically told them, "Hey, I know everything already. I don't need you." This child's parent, parents, or parental guardian(s) then graciously informed him or her that he or she should prove it.

So, he or she did. With a little help from some friends, they lived independently, successfully, and happily ever after. Did you expect something different? They /did/ know everything, after all.

The reaction from other parents was absolutely outrageous. "Good lord, woman," said one with a particularly finicky moustache, "You're a genius! You deserve a Nobel Peace Prize for this innovation!" Another, a woman with long, flowing hair the color of dead grass, noted that such a practice would inevitably make teenagers more financially, socially, and audibly independent of their parents. The best way to prepare a child for the real world is to punt them into it shortly before they're ready. Now, if only the same analogy applied for fireproofing a teenager, I might have a few less burns...

But yeah. Disregarding my brief, yet intense auto-pyromania incident, everything I just said totally makes sense and explains why nobody on this street was outside of the age range of sixteen to twenty-two. Approximate ages, mind you. I'm not entirely sure which one was the one with twenty-two years or who had sixteen. I'll leave that little six-year range of ambiguity as an exercise to your imagination.

What? Don't tell me you really expect me to know something like that. What, just because I'm telling the story means I know everything about everyone involved? Sheesh. They've got a right to privacy, too, you know. I'm going to be telling you nearly everything else about them, so-- Okay, fine. Maybe I'm a hypocrite. But I'm also a /lazy/ hypocrite who can't be bothered to mine age information.

Anyway, I digress. The name of the street upon which the entirety of our story takes place is named Grapefruit Boulevard. Odd name? Only if you don't realize the incredible symbolism contained within the grapefruit. You see, the grapefruit represents life. It represents oddities, absurdities, and the bizarre. It represents ambivalent and drastic change. Some things become better, some things become worse, no things remain the same. But, beyond all that, there is one thing, absolutely and unambiguously, that the grapefruit is.

It is a bittersweet fruit that nobody really seems to enjoy a whole lot, but gets grown anyway.