Drinking coffee

I love coffee. I probably average about five cups a day. Espresso or drip, light roast or dark, latte or frappe, flavored syrup or straight black, I don't care. Just stick it in an IV bag and hook it up to my veins. I run off the stuff.

It's very funny because my parents are not coffee drinkers. They actually got a little four-cup coffee maker and bean grinder just for when I visit. (FTR, my personal coffeemaker is a 12-cupper.) When you live in the great Pacific Northwest though, you grow to worship the sacred bean regardless. It's the birthplace of Starbucks, after all.

In high school we had a cappuccino bar, and that started my love of coffee. It was also very trendy to visit Stuart's Coffeehouse for open mic nights at the time, though I never went (the coffeehouse is no longer open; the location is now a decent Cajun restaurant). I suffered the instant stuff at home until I got the 12-cup coffeemaker that I still have to this day. I don't think my mom was pleased that her teenager added such a kitchen appliance, but she digressed (I don't think my dad really cared). I mean, it beat drinking beer at least.

I hated it at first, but I kept drinking it black until I loved it. I remember my friends being slower to adapt to coffee. Every morning before catching the bus, I would go across the street to my BFF's and meet up with her. After I started drinking coffee, so did she, and one morning she shared.

BFF: "I just made the best coffee! Try it!"
Me: "You...uh...like a little coffee in your cream and sugar, huh?"

It was like drinking liquid candy. I got five new cavities that day.

I'll always remember when she went to get coffee for her favorite teacher. She made it the way she liked it. The look on his face when he took a sip was one of confusion, shock, and perhaps some pain. He was a black coffee drinker. He was careful to specify black coffee every other time someone fetched him coffee.

I'm happy to report my friend no longer ruins coffee anymore, as far as I know.

I actually drank so much coffee about three years ago I had to take a break from coffee. I was drinking at least eight cups a day, plus caffeinated breakfast smoothies and sometimes I would drop a caffeine pill in my coffee for extra measure. I was not getting wired; I was just barely getting awake, and I was getting stomach cramps from coffee first, then from ingesting any sort of food in general. It was tea for me from there on out for two months until my stomach got under control. I never got a formal diagnosis that it was the caffeine's fault, but I think it was the caffeine's fault because things got better after my coffee hiatus.

It's interesting how much our community environment has an impact on us as our parental upbringing. I remember my parents giving me all sorts of stories about how caffeine would stunt my growth and weaken my bones and all sorts of lies. (I'm a bit above average in height and my body's taken a fair share of beatings and never broken a bone save for my wrist once, and that's when I was 10 before I ever touched coffee.) When you grow up in a coffee culture, you adapt to the culture.

My parents probably wonder where they went wrong with me (it's not just the coffee I adopted from the culture...raised in a west coast Blue State and parents are from midwest Red State...we have learned to agree to disagree and not discuss politics when we chat). I can safely say coffee didn't stunt my growth or rot my bones. I think they did okay, regardless of what I drink.