Looking for my orange

I've been eating the hell out of these mandarins my wife got recently.

Oranges and their cousins are fine, in my book. I don't hate them or love them. They're just there.

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But every once in a while, you get a batch so juicy, so sweet, people start calling you Depeche Mode because you just can't get enough!1

Despite what you may think, dear reader, this is not a post about oranges. It is, instead, a post about one orange. Yes, one—singular—an orange so good I still think about it nearly a decade later. You might assume this must be the best orange ever growed. An orange so juicy, so sweet, so orange-y that no mere mortal could ever fathom its majesty—how else could you justify letting one piece of citrus become a crucial piece of your personal philosophy and familial vocabulary?

I understand why you'd assume such, but that's not quite the case. The orange was merely the orange I needed at the time.

What the hell does that mean?

Sometimes you gotta step back to see how to move forward. So I want you to grab your remote and rewind seven years. No, that's not far enough. Just a bit more. Now stop! Eight years. Perfect.

Man, it was a different time back then. COVID hadn't shut down the world. Only true nerds talked about AI—half the rest of the world couldn't even spell the term. And Pee-wee Herman was still alive.

The world was the okay-est it'd been for a while.

But I wasn't in such a great spot. I appeared okay on the outside, but on the inside, I was nowhere near my okay-est.

Anxiety and depression were eating me alive. I was in a rut I saw no way out of.

Exercising didn't do the trick. Neither did meditating or journaling. Crying wasn't helping, but that didn't stop me.

I'd been in this place before. And I've been there since, including when COVID kept us all at home way too long, when AI showed just how stupid people can act over a new shiny something, and when Pee-wee Herman kicked the bucket.

Okay, maybe only the first of those scenarios is true. But I've been there enough times to know that I often just have to wait it out and ride the wave when the tide of my emotional state starts to improve.

But just because you have to wait don't mean you gotta be hungry. So, one day, eight years or so ago, I went to my kitchen to get a snack. I made a rare healthy dietary decision and looked through my options in the fruit holder thingy on the kitchen counter. I grabbed an orange, which looked like any other orange, and I peeled it and broke it into pieces and I threw a piece in my mouth and bit down.

Then, the strangest thing happened: As soon as that first wave of juice hit my tongue, I immediately climbed out of the rut I feared I'd never escape. My eyes widened, my shoulders rose, and my spirits lifted. I found my way out of depression, and joy was instantly possible again. It was the kind of transformation that your one friend expects when he tells you Just don't be sad.

Why did the orange work such magic? I have no idea. The best explanation I can come up with is that I was pre-scurvy. But my vitamin C levels must have been fine the other times I was depressed, because eating an orange has yet to get me out of a rut again. And, believe me, I've had plenty chances to test it out.

That orange's usefulness extended beyond its consumption. I credited the orange earlier in the post as having become part of my personal philosophy and familial vocabulary. That simple orange became a sign of hope, a reminder that it could all get better, seemingly at the snap of a finger. It also gave me a way of telling my wife I'm not at my okay-est when she asks how I'm feeling. She gets it when I answer that I'm just looking for my orange.

But the orange isn't just an orange. Sometimes it's a social event. Sometimes it's a vulnerable moment with your partner. Or maybe it's a trip to the emergency room for your child that reminds you that your kids are still so little and they need you and you matter so much, if only to them.

Oranges come in all shapes and sizes. Some are juicy and sweet, and some are dry and bland. But if you're lucky, you might find an orange so good you can't help writing about it.

If you're looking for your orange, I sure hope you find it, whatever the hell it is.