Learning to Love Coffee

Back when I lived with my cousin, we would both have some trouble getting out of the house in the morning.  I always thought she did a better job than I did, but honestly, I don't remember being late for work all that often when I worked in Arizona.  One of the incentives she used was to stop at Starbucks on her way to work and get herself a coffee.

 

I've never really been a coffee drinker, so at the time, I didn't get how this would help.  I'm more of a tea girl, myself.  And I'm a particularly perverse tea person.  I like it strong (what the English call "builder's tea") but then I add sugar and milk.  It's sort of the tea equivalent of a latte.  On weekends I allow myself a little luxury and I have a cup of chai--I chuck the spices in with the strongest tea in my cupboard and drink it with fluffy, foamy milk and raw sugar.  There's not enough time to make that during the week, let alone to enjoy it properly.

 

Because it seems like an insult to my cup of tea to drink it in the car or on the run (and also because my on-the-go "coffee" mug is so narrow that it's unpleasant to wash), I've taken to drinking coffee.  Coffee feels like an on-the-run beverage.  Tea seems at home in a mug or a china cup, but coffee is a more street-smart beverage--it's a cup of civilization that you can take with you into the most uncivilized situations (commuting, morning meetings, requirements cage matches).  Coffee sticks up for me at work.  It says, "Hey, don't worry.  You're not beaten!  You're just...undercaffeinated!"  Tea encourages people at work to push you around a little.  They think of you as grandmotherly, and not as the person who just needs to kick butt and take names until the job is done.  Coffee is the beverage of butt-kickers. 

 

The Starbucks at work is my fallback position.  I don't know what tasters generate Starbucks blends, but most of them are...an acquired taste that I don't care to acquire.  Don't get me wrong.  I end up at Starbucks a lot.  They're sort of like Disney--they're ubiquitous (there's no neighborhood barista inside my office building, but there IS a Starbucks), and a lot of their stuff is not exactly what you'd choose for yourself, but you have to admit they're good at what they do.

 

But they're not as good as Gorilla Coffee in Park Slope.  Gorilla is on my way to work, so as I zip by when I'm running late, I can look longingly at the people getting tasty coffee that is 1000% better than Starbucks coffee.  When I actually manage to get out of the house at a decent hour, I can stop in myself for a maple latte, which is the coffee equivalent of my builder's tea--strong and just-sweet-enough, like being slapped in the face with a velvet glove.  My only complaint is that the rush fades a little by the time I get to work, but it's totally worth getting up an extra fifteen minutes early.

 

So now I get it.  Tea is always going to be my first love.  But coffee and I are learning to get along, too.