oh, my darling clementine

one day about a week ago, i noticed that my nails were a funny yellow/orange color. not being easily alarmed about my own health, i ignored it and hoped it would go away. two or three days later, i started to worry. optimistically, i tried to attribute my yellowness to my carrot intake because i once knew a girl who ate so many carrots her hands turned orange. but i knew that i hadn’t eaten any yellow or orange vegetables in the past couple weeks, and then, not enough to cause discoloration; besides, my palms were perfectly normal. then, i thought, what if i have jaundice? panicked, i ran to the bathroom to check the whites of my eyes. to my profound relief, they were still white. since the only place where i noticed the strange discoloration was on my nails, (and only between the tip and the cuticle) i knew that the villainous stain culprit must be something i spent a lot of time touching. but what?

i thought long and hard: i knew it couldn't be the yellow chalk from school or my yellow/orange pen because i don't use them very often. none of my clothes are obnoxiously bright yellow and i don't do manual labor with anything yellow. all at once, i realized: it must be the four or more clementines i'd been eating per day. my clementines of choice are not those itty bitty american ones, but the big, juicy, technicolor-orange, spanish variety. by peeling them manually, i must have been staining my nails orange/yellow. cue the huge sigh of relief. thank goodness nothing was actually wrong with me.

i'm not going to stop eating clementines because of this little scare. my friend p thinks that i should at least slow down, but in my opinion, living with stained nails is a small price to pay for the incredible amount of vitamin c and flavor, not to mention joy, that each clementine brings me. plus, i might be a little addicted.