It is often that one finds themself in the grocery section perusing produce for a nice piece of fruit to eat. Noting where the fruit comes from can be just as important as the characteristics that you are selecting the fruit for. I do not purchase fruit from Peru or Chile because they are tricksters who do not produce quality produce
I don't really hate Peru or Chile. I just hate the disappointment I feel when seeing some reasonably priced produce only to discover that that it's produced there. The high altitude of these nations means that they're capable of growing some fruit year round rather than being stuck behind the usual seasonal limitations that we ground dwellers face. While this might sound great the reality of it is that fruit that I eat imported from these countries usually ends up being of a lower quality than local out of season varieties.
There are a couple of rules that I generally follow when selecting fruit and I'm opinionated enough to make this site specifically to elucidate them to you
Fruit are delicate things. Their skin and flesh is soft and delicate much like the not fully formed head of a baby. You don't squeeze a newborns head and you don't squeeze your fruit. If squeezing of fruit is allowed in any way whatsoever then you can expect that you won't be the only person squeezing the fruit. Whenever you squeeze fruit, no matter how lightly, you're bruising the surface of that fruit. You're never going to be the first person to squeeze that fruit so checking ripeness by squeezing is just going to create false positives if you choose not to purchase that piece of fruit.
Since you can't squeeze you have to smell. Covid has affected my near daily fruit selection process in that I get weird looks whenever I shove my nose into the most aromatic parts of a peach in order to gauge their ripeness. Don't let watcher deter you. The only people who will actively stop you are old grannie smiths who are easily deterred by physically asserting yourself.
Knowing what a fruit should smell like when it's ripe is a learning process. You can't exactly describing the ripeness of a particular fruit has nuances but it comes easily once you start doing it for yourself.
The Peru/Chile issue has already been discussed so my national hatreds can rest. Fruit isn't always ripe and in peak of season but there's also ripe fruit in peak of season. In season fruit is going to be cheaper and tastier than out of season fruit almost universally. This a choice that benefits your wallet, your tongue, and your nose so why not take advantage of it? There's also something to be said about the minor sense of oneness you feel with nature in purchasing fruit by season before you snap back to the realities of industrialized food production. Knowing and memorizing what's going to be in season is difficult but i believe in you.