Moving was a rite of passage for Methodist preacher’s kids, a dizzying launch into the unknown, a vast flight of fortitude, courage and resilience. The summer before my senior year, my family moved from Marietta to Dunwoody, both suburbs of Atlanta, but one contained people I knew and the other didn’t. Asking a 17-year-old to make new friends is like asking him to enter a cave filled with Sleestak. I looked in terror through the portal and refused to go. My parents let me stay behind and live with my best buddy, the other Greg, until school started in the fall. Even on my side of the portal, life that summer was an adventure, mostly fueled by minimum wage, low octane and Tang.

I rose early each morning before the chickens, the sun and most other teenagers (at least the ones I knew) and chugged down a glass of Miss Cecile’s orange Tang on the way out the door. I swiftly boarded my 1976 Toyota Celica GT then blasted off toward the interstate and my grown-up sign-making, silk-screening, art department job. Already, my vitamin-filled stomach ached for lunchtime, when my boss would say, “Come on Wormy, let’s grab a bite to eat.” If Tang could help astronauts orbit the earth, surely it would help me circumnavigate Atlanta on the Perimeter.

I learned a lot that summer. I discovered that the space between boyhood and manhood was a world unto itself, a world of firsts and lasts. I learned that family extended far beyond the reach of parents and sisters and that work was not just about work. And Tang? Well, while Tang didn’t make me smart, courageous and strong like an astronaut, it did seem to make my Celica go faster.