Do you like coffee? I do. At least, I like the concept of liking coffee. I like the color and the shape of the coffee beans, I like the sound of coffee beans being milled into shaky, grainy grounds. I like the way it smells, I like the shooshing sound of latte steamers and the clanky “whunk, whunk” of barristas making those fancy drinks. I enjoy the spreading galactic swirl of milk (or cream or whipped froth) and I (ever the sweet tooth) love stirring sugar into the drink’s dark depths. I enjoy coffee-flavored ice cream (when I let myself eat it), coffee-flavored yogurt and even a slice or two coffee-seasoned potroast. I’ve always used coffee to age paper (an early sign I’d work in the movies) and I inevitably use coffee as a treat for myself whenever I have the time and the money to stop at a coffee house. When you total it all up it’s undeniable that I enjoy everything there is about coffee. So why, praytell, is it that I rarely manage to drink more than a quarter cup of the damned stuff?
My Dad is never slow to point out how I’ll go to great lengths to make or buy a cup of coffee just so that I can leave it sitting in its cup, growing ever colder. While I’ll continue drinking coffee long after it has reached equilibrium with room temperature, it’s all the more often that I hardly make a dent in drinking the stuff at all.
My desk dowtown is forever crowded with colorful clusters of cups from Caribou and Starbucks, long dead, plastic lids glued to waxed rims by the sticky, sugar-rich liquid held within those expensive memorials to my fascination. China cups from the breakroom are far less discreet about my inability to consume their contents. Congealed snarls of irradiated Half & Half float at the top of the cup’s tepid contents, growing bacterium surely able to cure something. I’m sure that fully half of the “science experiments” the set dressers used to find stuck on the horizontal boards on the back of set walls (usually a week later) belonged to me. They assured me that some of the cups’ contents had layers of green and blue on them, and by the time they were discovered many had developed rich histories, notable works of literature and were well on their way to perfecting the Electric Slide.
To this day that knowledge, and that knowledge alone, is what drives me to learn to drink an entire cup of coffee. For the sake of future generations and for our planet’s continued existence, all knowledge of the Electric Slide must pass forever from this Earth.
[tags]coffee, caribou, starbuck’s, electric slide, ice cream, yogurt, cup, cream, milk[/tags]
Shame on you. Wasting the toilsome, interminable work of the native Columbian and nature herself, who have yielded their sweat and toil to offer to you the glorious “drink of the gods”, which may only be grown within a smidgen of earth’s latitude. It’s wickedness such as this that will spread through the masses and be the downfall of AmeriKKKer. I warn you, out of sincere concern for your eternal state and duty towards your fellow humans, turn away from this sin of neglect and squander and please…finish the cup (or just ask for half a cup next time :) Or, take your unused portion home with you and pour it over ‘nilla ice cream with a squirt of Hershey’s chocolate and some Kahlua if you like! TTFN, you darlin’ lil’ redhead.