It was “The Orange Juice Incident” that left me with the most enduring of Dorian’s life lessons. It happened this way. . . .
One gloomy Saturday afternoon my mom left us kids in our father’s care. In the stillness that settled on the house after the kitchen door closed, I stood riveted to the linoleum staring longingly at the beige refrigerator door. Behind that door, I knew, reposed a rare treat, something we didn’t have just any day. Mom had made an entire pitcher of orange juice that morning. I could almost feel its chunky pulp goodness trickling down my throat.
On the other side of the breakfast bar separating the kitchen from the dining room, Dad tried fruitlessly to balance the checkbook. To me, it always seemed like a thankless task. Why remind yourself of how little you actually have?
Clearly, the sheer effort of attempting to conjure up money where none existed demanded all his substantial strength. He scratched in the checkbook register, his hands gripping the pencil in a tight fist with his arms wrapped defensively around the checkbook. Reason might have suggested that now was not the best time to beg for a glass of the precious elixir, but I wasn’t listening.
“Dad. Hey, dad.”
“What.” He answered, without looking up.
“Can I have some orange juice.” I asked super-speedy before he could say no.
“Not now.” He grimaced, his eyes never leaving the check book.
“Please, dad.” I countered.
“You’ll just have to wait until I’m finished.” He said, some impatience beginning to bleed through.
In those days, my father had a way of warning us when we stepped out of line. He would simply say, “I feel my hand beginning to itch.” The implication being that the most efficient way to satisfy that itch would be to swat our sitting down places until they glowed. This was before the public imprudently decided that spanking constituted a crime against humanity.
My father had not threatened me with the dreaded "itchy hand" this time. And truthfully, I don’t remember my bottom ever glowing. But as it would have been difficult to see, who knows? More to the point, the fact remains, I knew better than to cross my father. So I waited for . . . all of 15 seconds. Then, seeing no change in my father’s unhappy condition, I took circumstances into my own hands.
Stealthily, I approached the fridge. Then, employing my budding covert ops skill set, I silently broke the seal on the fridge, located the pitcher, and slowly, unsteadily, I slid it off the shelve at chest level. Stepping back into the room—a bit top-heavy now, I immediately recognized with horrifying clarity that my underdeveloped t-rex arms could not support the weight of an entire pitcher of juice. Too soon, my arms quivered and fell slack. The pitcher met the floor with a dull thwack! Somehow that sound broke my father’s concentration.
To fully understand my father’s subsequent response, you have to understand the modest circumstances of his youth. He grew up in a home with seven siblings. On my grandfather’s scanty salary, money was something of a curiosity in their home. As a result, they never had juice. N-E-V-E-R.
In fact, once—when young—my father found a large pitcher of orange liquid in his mother’s fridge. It being a warm day, he rashly concluded it must be juice, poured himself a large glass, and downed all eight ultra-toxic ounces before realizing it was dishwasher soap. Through divine intervention, Dad managed to live. But the experience left an indelible impression in his soul. Like water to Steinbeck’s Okies, juice represented the pinnacle of luxury to my father. And I had just poured the family jewels all over the kitchen floor.
I stood a condemned man, my chin resting on my chest and my feet congealing in a coagulating pool of orange juice. His steps into the kitchen echoed off my cringing back. I braced for impact, my eyes squeezed shut. The steps stopped. I could see him surveying the mess through my squinty ninja eyes. Dad stooped down, picked up the pitcher, which managed to land bottom down, and then—in an act to defy all his early childhood conditioning—he poured the remaining contents over my head. Shockingly, several ounces of juice remained in the pitcher.
I wasn’t sure how to respond. This wasn’t at all what was supposed to happen. I stared at dad, and he stared right back at me. I’m unclear how much time elapsed, but Mom chose this moment to make her re-entry. When she finally reached the kitchen, she looked first at me, then at the pitcher in dad’s hands. Neither of us moved, frozen by the magnitude of our mutual crime. I barely breathed.
Then she began to laugh in that way that parents laugh when something deep inside, buried by layers of care and worry, suddenly and irreparably snaps leaving them forever a different person. Apparently, at mom’s home they must have sipped entire vats of juice because it certainly wasn’t her currency. Mom’s laugh, one of her finest qualities, broke the spell. Eventually, and Dad returned to his checkbook.
While I know it happened on a few occasions, I can’t remember a single time my father spanked me. I can only remember once when he raised his voice at my sisters and me. But I will never forget the time he rightfully poured a pitcher of juice over my head.
Moral of the story? Saturday afternoons are a bad time to ask for juice. I’ve hated Saturday afternoons ever since.
