Honesty in Marketing: Sucking Oranges

When I was a wee boy I was an engineer.  I built things, broke things, burned things, and took apart all of my toys with screwdrivers.  But one thing eluded me, and that was drinking fruit juice out of  fruit with a straw.  I knew it was possible-- it was in commercials and art on the cartons for orange juice, and on Gilligan's island they were always drinking coconuts with straws in them too.

So I gave it a try.  How to get the straw in?  An orange's hide is rather dense.  After many desperate attempts at jamming a straw into an orange I finally succeeded, only to discover that no juice came out. 

What was I doing wrong?  I looked at the orange juice carton. 

A paper straw.  That's what it must have been.  The straw on the carton was actually a paper straw with red and white stripes.  In my few years on earth, however, I had never seen one in person.  Instead, I had been jabbing my fruit with inferior clear plastic straws. 

Later I was able to interpret more handily the inside of fruit and realized that unless I was to somehow rupture the cellular structures that held the juice I would never be able to suck it out, even with a striped paper straw.

It was the end of innocence for me.