Coffee: many hail it as nectar from the gods. Or God. Franchises like Starbucks are springing up every other block to feed the insatiable demand of caffeine-starved Americans everywhere.
"Mommy, can I have a coloring book?"
"Honey, you know I spent my last $3.20 buying a tall white chocolate mocha with extra whipped cream from Starbucks. Maybe next week."
For as long as I can remember, coffee has been this mysterious substance religiously consumed by adults or teenagers at least three times a day, without fail. The only other comparable product would be cigarettes. "If I don't have my morning smoke and cup of coffee, man, I'm just not awake. Thank God for Colombia."
I have a theory that Maxwell House is out to take over the world. What better way to do it? First, get all your would-be mindless minions dependent on a chemical substance of some sort. This could be a two-pronged attack, if Maxwell House teamed up with Philip Morris. Once you get the nation hooked on coffee or cigs, you can do anything short of demanding the first-born child if you threaten to remove the supply. It's insidious.
Regardless of the plot, what bothers me most about coffee is the disturbingly sensual desire most people feel for that cup of java. Have you ever watched someone drink that first cup of coffee in the morning and feel like you were invading a private moment? It's a scary thought, but to some people, coffee and girlfriend/boyfriend occupy the same mental niche: "ahh, love of my life."
Have you ever walked down the supermarket aisle in Wegmans that carries all the brands of coffee? It takes up almost half a full-aisle, sharing space only with tea and with hot cocoa, both coffee-for-the-weak substances. That aisle is bigger than the aisle that carries over-the-counter medication, I swear. What does that say about us? That we'll suffer through a headache before we'll go without a cup of coffee?
Coffee destroys self-reliance. No student today can study for a test/do homework/do laundry/call his or her mother without a cup of coffee securely in hand. Don't you people realize that you put your life into the hands of an uncaring, soulless corporation, or worse, of 12 oz. of heated H2O mixed with the strippings of coffee beans?
I can remember the first time I tasted coffee. I was in fifth grade, on a field trip to Washington, D.C., when the hotel brought us each a cup of coffee. I was so excited; after all, only adults drank coffee and it made them all so happy, so coffee must be wonderful! And then I tasted it.
This is coffee? This bitter, sticky taste that stayed in my mouth half the day and left me with a headache? Please, no. No matter how often I tried it after, no matter how much sugar I poured in or how much milk I cut it with, I could still taste the sly flavor those coffee crystals, mocking me as I watched all the others drinking blissfully away.
My parents would laugh when I swore not to drink coffee habitually, as they did. "You say that now," my dad would say with an evil smirk. "I used to say that, too." Thanks for the support.
And yet ... He was right.
I hate coffee most because it broke my spirit. "Drink me," it whispers from the heated dispensers in Putnam's, seconds away from our office. "Come drink me."
It all started when I went away for the summer and stayed in a house where the drink of choice was coffee. My hostess didn't ask me if I wanted any, she just got up and made me a cup of coffee at 8 o'clock in the morning, plopped it in front of my plate and went back to bed. It was a battle of epic dimensions: I would glare at the cup with the steam rising seductively from the top, the color so deceptively like that of hot chocolate that I could almost forget ... I went two days before I broke down.
And now, now I am a slave to the caffeine, witlessly supporting the Starbucks conglomeration with my $3.20 a day. Gone are the days when I could wake up in the morning, drink a glass of orange juice and go merrily on my way. Now, I grope my way to the coffee machines along with the rest of the bleary-eyed addicts, desperately praying for just one fix before I make my way to that 9 a.m. class.
