Orange Juice

 

In the Philippines it is known as Tang or Eight ‘o Clock. I call it ohreynsh jooz.

 

I remember my mother telling me a story about how orange juice killed my auntie’s gold fishes. Back when my father was still alive and when we were still living in Cubao, Quezon City, it was mandatory for my older sister to drink orange juice during breakfast. Since multivitamins and ascorbic cecon wasn’t available back then as source of vitamin C, she was made to drink the tangy juice every morning. And because our house was near where my grandparents and aunty lived, it was common for our family to stay over and have breakfast in their house. My aunty was still single, and she still had a fascination with fishes. She kept 5 goldies in a fish tank in the living room. Like my aunty, my sister was fascinated with the fishes. She talks to them, counts them and tries to find out if they gave birth to new fishes, and pets them with her fingers – if she can get her hands on the scaly animals. One day, when the family was having breakfast at my grandparents’ house, my sister decided to “visit” auntie’s goldies. After some time, she came back to where she was seated at the dining table and sat down. Alarmed why my sister was so quiet, mother asked her if she had done any naughty thing. My sister told mother that she thought that the fishes were thirsty. They looked towards the direction of the fish tank and saw five upside-down gold fishes floating in murky waters. That’s how orange juice – and my sister – killed my auntie’s gold fishes.

 

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Orange juice took a back seat in my life when we moved to my other grandmother’s house in Paranaque. We would only have orange juice when there are visitors– which was not that often – and when we had family lunches on Sundays. These days rarely happen, so I somewhat forgot how good orange juice tastes like, but even with this predicament, my yearning for the juice never left my system, and I learned new things from the experience. Due to the rare opportunities that I had with the drink, I learned how to cherish the juice. Whenever I drink it from a glass, I let the ice cubes melt first. After they have all melted, I will sip on the watery excess, and then drink the juice. In this way, I prolonged the longevity of my beverage. I also learned that the best part of homemade orange juice was at the bottom of the glass – the un-dissolved sugar. Mix the sugar with the remaining juice and it tastes like a sweeter version of Orange – the gummy candy takatak boys sell.

 

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In my high school, they don’t sell orange juice. What was cool to drink then was iced tea. Orange juice was so unpopular that I forgot that I liked the beverage. From my freshmen year to the time I graduated, all that I had in my system was iced tea. A 10 Peso iced tea against a 20 Peso tetra-packed orange juice was a no-brainer. You go for the iced-tea. Every now and then, I would drink the tangy juice, but like many of my batch mates, I forgot that we were a generation raised on drinking orange juice. That’s one thing I regret – not drinking enough orange juice while in high school.

 

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Instead of drinking alcoholic beverages, instead of going out on parties, and instead of intoxicating myself with things I dare not mention because of Mo. Candida, I should have drank orange juice instead. But I was an eager college student. I was eager to learn what college life is all about, and that life told me that college students don’t drink orange juice. What we should drink are alcoholic beverages, coffee, or C2. There’s no room for water, milk, or orange juice. And that’s what I did. I didn’t drink water, milk, or orange juice. The whole world seemed void of the orange beverage back then now that I think of it. Whenever we buy drinks to chase whatever alcoholic beverage that we’re drinking, we always went for colas and pomelo. I never saw any orange juice packets or bottled orange juice. The only thing that came close to orange beverage that I drank was gin-pomelo.

 

 

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I became reunited with orange juice the day I became almost orange in color. I just finished “giving” three vials of my blood to some medical technologist at some hospital. As a treat to the pain that came with being injected in the same vein three times by a needle, my mother brought me to a fast food restaurant. I had a burger and an orange juice for my meal. It is funny how the drink that I held in my hand resembled the color of my skin. It was a few days after my reunion with orange juice that I found out I contracted Hepatitis A, hence my yellowish color.

 

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Sometimes, I find myself wanting a glass of the orange beverage. When this happens, I ask myself, why am I so attracted to this juice?  Is it because it’s what I drink whenever I’m about to crush cut weight, or because it brings back fond memories of my childhood? Is it because, when looked at the philosophical level, we all know that the juice is worth the squeeze? There’s a myriad of questions that I still have regarding why I like the juice so much, and I have a myriad of answers to these questions too. But one answer stands out from the rest: MASARAP.