Coffee bean Bow Tie o’ the Day and I mean no disrespect to any of y’all who might be coffee lovers. Nor do we mean any disrespect to those of y’all who might find coffee to be the work of the Devil. Nope. This is just me telling you about my own personal recent relationship with coffee.
I have never been a coffee drinker. I have ordered a cup o’ Joe at various times throughout my life—mainly to see if I can finally taste what the bigly hubbub is all about, and whether I’ve acquired a taste for it yet. It has never seemed tasty to me. People tell me to throw in some cream and sugar, but I think if you have to put a ton of cream and sugar in coffee in order to be able to stand drinking it, it ends up being something other than coffee—so why bother? Fresh peaches can be good with cream and sugar, but peaches are good on their own already. It’s not the same with coffee. So every once in a blue moon, I slurp some coffee, push it aside, and then forget about it for a decade or so—when I decide to give it another try and order myself a cup. My verdict, as always is a resounding, lower case “meh.”
Fast forward to some minor-but-picky issues I’ve been having with my gut since my surgery in October. I did some research and spoke with a couple of my doctors, and the consensus is that I should try drinking a minimal amount of coffee every day to see if that helps my system work out its kinks. So about six weeks ago, I made a morning cup o’ coffee part of my daily routine.
Let me describe to you how coffee smells and tastes to me. When I put a cup of coffee to my lips and take a sniff, I smell what I can only describe as a motel ashtray filled with layers of cigarette ashes and crumpled butts and the tail end of a cheap cigar. And when I take a sip of the coffee, it tastes like I drank the liquified contents of said full ashtray—and then licked the ashtray clean. 😱
Theoretically, it seems like an easy choice for me to simply quit drinking the bean brew—except I’m now “blessed” (stuck?) with a working solution. Yup, coffee seems to be working miracles for me. And I’m a bit miffed that it does. I want my gut problem solved, but I have discovered I really really really really don’t like coffee. Drinking coffee makes me metaphorically sick, but it cures my literal belly woes. Go figure. ☕️ 🚬
[As a favor to a pal who requested it, I am re-posting this post from 2019. Enjoy it again, or for the first time in case you missed it when it originally showed up here.]
Hey! Look what I rescued. It’s my ties-themed 100 oz. mini-keg, which was my go-to sip cup for a couple of years after I bought it. Although it cracked inside last year, I never had the heart to throw it out. Its flex straw had a slight crack in it too, and the lid doesn’t fit tightly either, but its tie graphics are too perfect for me. 7-11 doesn’t sell the tie design “cup” anymore, so I can’t go buy another one. What’s a girl to do with a cracked 100 oz. ties mini-keg? For the last year it’s been mocking me by sitting in the garage whining out its jealousy of my new, differently designed mini-keg. I was about to finally toss the battered, cracked mini-keg over the weekend. And then I had a genius idea I can’t believe I didn’t think of last year: DUCT TAPE. I’ll tape the inside cracks and let you know how it works out.
As I searched for the duct tape, Tie o’ the Day and I were contemplating the weirdities of my life. I don’t care who you are or how straight-laced and “normal” your life has been, you’ve likely found yourself in surreal situations here and there—when you wonder how you got into the predicament and how you’ll ever get out of it. You didn’t set out to be in the situation. The scenario is so outlandish you couldn’t have purposely concocted it if you had wanted to. And you’re positive no one will believe you when you tell them the story.
Because I am I, I have a zillion of ’em. Because I am I, everyone knows my improbable tales really occurred. I call these odd goings-on My Greatest Hits. One of My Greatest Hits is courtesy of the 7-11 in Takoma Park, MD, in the mid-90’s. It doesn’t star a 7-11 mini keg, just a 7-11 Super Big Gulp cup.
Interstate 95 is the main N-S route on the East Coast. The traffic usually runs at a pretty good clip. I used to drive it every school day morning from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore’s inner city where I taught middle school. My drive to work usually took about 35 minutes.
But one morning, when I was just about to exit the freeway and head into West Baltimore, all lanes of the I-95 traffic going my way came to a halt. That was rare for that particular area of the freeway. Rarer still, an hour later no vehicle had moved a centimeter. Something bigly was surely shutting down the road. (It ended up being a many-car accident.) By that time, I had been sitting in the car for more than an hour. For me, that’s venturing into MUST PEE NOW territory. I had finished my Super Big Gulp of Diet Coke, and I needed to get rid of it. And I don’t mean I needed to throw away the cup. A half-hour later, all drivers were still sitting in the precise same place we first were stopped. I was beyond desperate. I had no choice except to do what I had to do.
As a middle school teacher at the time, I learned to always have back-up clean clothing in the car. Out of nowhere, middle schoolers can create unheard of messes, and it’s not uncommon for those messes to end up on the teacher—whether you were anywhere near ground zero or not. It’s nice to have clean clothes to step into. Anyhoo… That day, in an attempt to make myself invisible in my car for a minute, I used my spare clothes to cover my front, side windows. I pulled down the visors. With my empty Super Big Gulp cup, I strategically did what had to be done. The contortionist skills I learned as a teenage mooner came in quite handy. Mission accomplished. Almost.
I extremely carefully got my pants back where they belonged. I opened my door and emptied the cup, which I didn’t want to keep in the car, but I don’t litter. I “baby wiped” my hands. (It was the pre- hand sanitizer era.) Although we drivers had all been stuck going nowhere on I-95 for almost two hours, I felt much better.
As I took my back-up clothes down from the windows, I heard a knock. I was sure it was a cop who would soon give me a ticket for Public Urination or Public Indecency or some such charge that would put me on the Sex Offender Registry. But it wasn’t a cop. It was a soccer mom from the van behind me. She asked, “Can I borrow that cup? I gotta go too.” I said, “No, you may not borrow it. You must keep it. Please, for the love of all that’s holy, keep it. Take these Wet Wipes too.”
I kid you not. As time passed and the cars still didn’t move for a small slice of forever, Soccer Mom was not the last person to use my cup. I watched my Super Big Gulp cup and the wipes travel up, down, and across a handful of the halted lanes as we sat parked on I-95 whittling away our time in the pre- affordable cell phone era. The cup that almost ranneth over had a somewhat bonding effect on those who were there that day. That cup was the founder of a different kind of Relief Society. Those of us who got relief became friends for life on that commute, even though we didn’t talk to each other and we would never see each other again. We shared a moment. We shared a cup.
I do not know who finally ended up with the Super Big Gulp cup and baby wipes.
BTW Speaking of my Delta, teenage mooning career, I once mooned a worker at the Taco Time drive-up window while driving and wearing overalls. Now that is a true and rare skill set. (Yes, young-un’s, Delta once had a Taco Time. And an A & W and an Arctic Circle.)
