Constitutions and Definitions Without Fixed Meanings Mean Nothing

Andrew leaves home to purchase bagels at his favorite bagel store. This Sunday ritual starts as always. He carefully studies every bagel option but chooses the same four he has for the many years. This is the standard dozen order. The same 12 bagels purchased, eaten, and left over. Life is in perfect balance … until today.

The young woman working the counter quickly and carefully places his bagels in a bag and passes them to the register. Andrew stands on line politely waiting his turn. The smell of his favorite coffee and the taste of his first bagel enter his mind as if he was eating on line. He soon is at the counter paying his tribute to the bagel gods. He notices something different. It may be the size or weight of his package but somehow he needs to count the bagels.

How could this be? Only 11 bagels are packed tightly in the bag marked “ONE DOZEN BOUNTIFUL BAGELS.” Andrew brings this to the attention of the owner “What do you mean?” the owner said in wonderment. “What does the bag say?”  There was one answer: one dozen bagels. “See, you have your dozen.”  Andrew was in a state of confusion. This must be a joke. He looked for a hidden camera but could only find eleven bagels where there should be 12.  

The owner sighed and explained, the bag company sent a shipment of dozen bagel bags slightly smaller than normal. The bag says one dozen. “We cannot be anchored in old ideas and concepts of what makes a dozen. We need to adapt our standards to the conditions of today. You are anchored by outdated concepts. The bag says a dozen bagels so whatever fits in the bag is a dozen.”  

Andrew did not know what to say.. Last week the bag of a dozen bagels had 12 bagels, this week it has 11 and the guy down the street gives 13 bagels and he calls that a dozen.  “Look!,” Andrew said,   “I have 11 bagels in this bag of a dozen and last week I had 12. How do you explain that?”  

The answer is clear to the owner.  He sets the standards.  “What did last week's bag say and what does this week’s bag say?  Andrew answers “one dozen.” “There you go and he moves to the next customer.

Andrew leaves bewildered.  A dozen is 12 and was all his life.  How could one man reinterpret twelve as being the amount fitting in a bag? How do we compare one person's price for a dozen items with another vendor's price without knowing the size of the bag? There is no longer order in the word dozen.  It now means nothing.  The advertised price per dozen means nothing.  He arrives home.  His wife looks at the bag and asks him where is the dozen eggs she requested. He looks at her saying “It is an impossible request. You did not tell me if the dozen you want has 11, 12 or 13 eggs.”