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This Is What I Do During Spring Break

posted April 1, 2007, 4:34 pm | Log In To Post Comments | view comments (5)
Tags: Aaron Barret, Coffee, suck, newspaper

 Coffee

 Like most small children of the United States of America, I got up ridiculously early to go to school. For five days in a week in a total of nine months (excluding snow days and other ways to not go to school), I've been getting up too early for about two-thousand-four-hundred-seventy-five days. Well, as I got up and walked to the table every God forsaken morning (not a morning person) to eat a bowl of cereal, I see that my parents had turned the coffee machine on and it would make this annoying noise. According to my parents as a kid, coffee woke you up but it didn't taste good because I was a kid. Now first off, this is totally wrong. Kids eat the grossest candy in the world which any smart adult would never touch. Even when I was a kid, I'd never touch those tiny jars of juice-candy which sold for a nickel in the dollar store. Really, candy juice, that makes me wanna vom whenever I think of it. But I guess they were half right since Angelica used to spit caviler out that her rich Dad gave her (Rugrats anyone?). But maybe that's a rich person thing, like how middle-class America lives off of fast food while rich people eat their Snickers with knives... Well the point I'm trying to make is that the generalization that you learn to love coffee as you get older is wrong. But as a kid, I pretended to like coffee. I took my Dad's coffee which consisted of one cream and two sugars and say I enjoyed it, but a second before, I was wincing at the bitter taste.

Coffee is such a strange beverage. Since the creation of the ice coffee, it's the only liquid (besides water) that can be enjoyed both hot and cold. And it's the only beverage that can be dropped on oneself and used in a lawsuit to earn some Benjamin’s. And it's also the only beverage that tastes different when it's color changes. Oh yeah, it's the only beverage that can "supposedly" (not really) sober you up. It's also got it's own form of cup, the coffee mug. You don't drink coffee out a transparent glass cup, that's just wrong. It also brought the term "I like my coffee like a like my men, black" to this world, though I've only heard two people say it in my lifetime. Oh one more thing, it's the only beverage that can have it's own store. There is no Coca Cola store or a Water Station. There are Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts (formerly known to primarily sell donuts). And it also has a butt load of forms to choose from. There's like some mocha thing, and then there's a cappuccino thing, and they've also got some frappe thing... I don't know if they sell "regular" coffee anymore.

Anyway, I grew up thinking that when I had come of age, I to would come to love coffee beans. But as I grew up, every event concerning coffee would just ruin my impression of it. Last year, I made many attempts to enjoy this beverage. One time in Jazz Band (no reference to American Pie intended), some kid I knew came in with an Iced Coffee. He offered some to me and I thought to myself, I've never had iced coffee and the opposite of iced coffee is hot coffee (no reference to Grand Theft Auto: San Andrea's infamous mod intended), and I don't like hot coffee so I must love this type of coffee. So I tried it and I kept the fact that I had just vomited in my mouth to myself. This other time, I was working at the annual science fair (during school \m/) and my friend went and grabbed a cup of coffee. He then let one of my other friends take a sip of it. My friend remarked "You put so much sugar in this! I can feel it eating through my teeth". I took a swig of it and felt off the rest of the day.

That's another thing, finding out what you like in your coffee. I hear people tell people "Get me a coffee, two creams, no sugar", or "Two sugars, one cream", or "one sugar, one cream". Me, I don't know what I like. I go to diners a lot with my bro's and, for some reason, I usually get coffee. Now one time, I had the perfect combination of crap in it and it tasted great. It was the first time out of two that I liked coffee. But every other time, I feel sick after I drink it. Once I was like, I'll just add stuff until I like it. About four creams and five sugars later, I felt like garbage. And just yesterday, I had some to wake me up. I put in three sugars and a cream. It was okay at first but near the end of my cup, it was dump. And since I mentioned the first time I liked coffee, I guess I should mention the second. It was this year during the float building period of my schools homecoming. This girl I know had some coffee from Dunkin' Donuts. It was offered to me and I said "Is it hot?". She said "Not really". I took a sip and it was really hot. But that tiny sip I had was awesome. I wonder what kind it was...

And that brings me to my last point, why in God's name does coffee have to be so ridiculously hot? It's practically boiling. And it's not really the hot beverage that you can feel go down your throat and heat you up. It's just really hot! I see people blow on their drinks for two seconds and then go at it. I sit there and blow on it forever and then when I start drinking, it's lukewarm and sucks. There must be something wrong with me. Everyone loves coffee, Mr. Scanland said "Coffee, mm, goodness", I kid you not. I go to college in a little over two years. But I'm not worried about failing my classes, not getting into the college I want, not getting the jobs or opportunities I want, I'm worried about not liking coffee. Think about it, every college kid goes to Starbucks and gets coffee. It's a sign that you are in fact a college kid. You walk around town wearing your artsy clothes, an Ipod that plays a song that only five people have heard of, and you have a coffee in your hand. And then when you get a job, you either drive around with a coffee in your car, or you walk around with a coffee in one hand and a newspaper in the other. And that's the cherry on this unfortunate cake, I don't like the paper either. It's boring! Some how The Clash strived by singing the newspaper but how can I be the next Joe Strummer if I can't read why the Governor of Philadelphia feels that he is in hot water with the voting public. I quote Aaron Barret again "Everything sucks, whoa-oh-whoa".

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