Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Pre-coffee Coffee

Those of you who know me at all may be shocked, stunned, and otherwise befuddled by the following deep, dark secret that lurks in my family history. You know Harry Potter, right? Young Harry lived in the cupboard and ate triscuits and Kraft American cheese slices until he was found and rescued by a mechanical owl and...well, you read it; I don't need to review the book for you, do I? Anywho, if you think Harry's tale is sad, you ain't seen nuthin' like the neglect suffered by the Suz.

Alright, already...I only made it through the first HP book (it was okay, ok?) so I realise I made most of that up, but it was meant to serve as a point of comparison to the historically factual stain upon my otherwise idyllic childhood*

You see, I grew up a wide-eyed and perfectly behaved Suz in the semi-wilds of Montana. Mother sewed our frocks and father harvested wheat 'down the way' for the hearty, life-sustaining breads which made me grow tall. Like I mentioned, however, (pay attention!!!) there was a stain. A stain! A stain on my family name.

We were a family of non-coffee drinkers.

There was no coffee in my house...well, there was some Sanka for when a guest or two showed up, but that's INSTANT DECAF, which is as coffee as watercolor paint water. At any rate, neither my mom nor my dad drink/drank/drunk the stuff. They didn't even consume tea, for crying in a pot (of coffee)! Needless to say, it has taken years of olfactory therapy to repair my neglected smelling sense, restoring it to it's natural state...one in which the luxurious smell of this caffeinated delicacy entertains these cells on a daily basis. Got it? I was deprived and abused, but I will not sue. I will instead Suz.

Now to the point of the article (and you see the pattern continuing here, no? The one where it takes several paragraphs to get to any kind of point. Maybe just "a few"...how many is "a few" again? It has to be more than two since two is "a couple"...) As I was saying before I so rudely interrupted myself, "Pre-coffee Coffee". Luckily for me I have made a few friends who understand this concept. I have also kept my other friends (you LDS folk know who you are and I apologise for demonising your childhoods as well...it's nothing personal, ok?). Pre-coffee Coffee is not a requirement every day, but when it is, it's the coffee a person such as me requires in order to be able to sufficiently function in order to determine when and where to get real Coffee...that is, the Coffee that counts. This means that "pre-coffee" can be crappy and made by just about anyone. It means it can be weak or strong or Colombian or Folgers or Sumatra. It just needs to contain caffeine. "But Suz", you then ask, "Pepsi/Coke/Tab/Jolt/RC Cola/America's Choice cola/etc.etc.etc. contains caffeine." True. Not the same. "What about tea?" you insist.

No.

Ladies and germs, there's just something about coffee. The smell. The ritual. The color. It is irreplaceable. When you are the kind of a person who understands the (albeit sick) concept of "pre-coffee Coffee", you also understand Coffee cannot exist within the realm of terms such as "like" or "dislike". It dwells on a planet all its own: Requirement. If you happen to live on the Planet Non-Requirement, there are days when I envy either your self-discipline or disinterestedness...

But this is before I've had my (wait for it) pre-coffee Coffee!

*For the record, the word "idyllic" is used loosely here--again, to emphasize the larger horror described in the same paragraph.

Source of pride in this article #1: I spelled "triscuit" correctly the first time, although I did look it up in Google as it was not included in Spell Check.

***Stay tuned for the transcript of Suz's upcoming interview with her mom, Linda Lee Johnson Myhr.***

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