Post #27 of 40
Giving Up Bad Coffee
A priest, a dancer, a special ed teacher and his husband sit down at the table with me.
As this is our last Lenten dinner and discussion, I ask, “Did any of you give up something for Lent - something you’d be willing to share?” They continue sipping their soup and shake their heads no. I continue, “I’ve been writing this blog about ‘giving up,’ - could be giving up something concrete like coffee or it could be…like….giving up complaining. Any ideas for me? I have a little over a week, and I need fifteen more posts.”
Do I sound desperate? Probably.
The teacher says, “Oh, I’d never give up coffee. I didn’t hear anything you said after coffee,” he teases. If you ask him what he teaches, he says, “kids.” If you ask him to elaborate, he says “kids with special needs.” He’s not being sassy. He’s being true to his calling. He wears a button that says, “Black Men Teach.”
“Do you have a special brand or way to make coffee? Some sort of ritual?” I ask.
“Not a ritual, but it’s what I do first think each morning. I start the water in a kettle on top of the stove and grind my beans. I pull out the French press and check my email on my phone. I drink some at home and take a thermos to school.”
“What about you?” I ask his husband.
“I get up later, so I do my own thing - coffee in a coffee maker. I end up sipping coffee most of the day.”
We look at the dancer. She is retired, colorfully dressed, and tiny. “Me? Coffee? No way. Can you imagine me on coffee?” she asks, her words at a quick, rhythmic clip.
Naturally, we turn to the priest.
The priest chimes in, “I make coffee every day in a regular drip coffeemaker, but it has to be just the right coffee.”
“I didn’t know you drank coffee,” I say. “I’ve only seen you drink tea.”
“Only first thing in the morning, and it has to be Red Giraffe Morning Blend. No other brand or blend. A month or so ago, I couldn’t find it, so I bought something else. It’s awful, so now I’m trying to use it up by putting one scoop in the basket each morning along with the good stuff.”
I laugh. We all sort of look at her and then each other - seems like we are all thinking through the dilemma of having bad coffee in the house while being philosophically opposed to throwing away food, and yes, I guess coffee counts as food in this case.
I want to offer some wisdom to her about how life’s too short for bad coffee, but that would be hypocritical. I had gotten into a similar situation. In addition to my writing, I have challenged myself to spend as little on groceries as possible…without mistreating myself.
Flavors and nutrition matter.
I recently bought an inexpensive coffee hoping it would be okay. It wasn’t.
I kept making a little each morning, downing it like medicine so I wouldn’t really taste it. Then, on the way to work, my car would inexplicably turn into the Starbucks parking lot or the McDonald’s drive-through line. Even McDonald’s coffee was better than the cheap coffee I’d been making at home. After four days of this, I gave in and bought better coffee. I haven’t thrown away the cheap coffee, though. It sits in the cabinet taunting me. Maybe I will stick googly eyes onto it, so that it will at least amuse me when I see it.
I told Carly, a young professor friend of mine, about my bad coffee and my inability to actually throw it away. She said that while she was in grad school, she tried so hard to be frugal. She scrimped wherever she could, whether buying the coffee that was two dollars less than than her favorite or opting for the cheapest tennis shoes possible. But, she realized this made no sense – why buy lower quality shoes that she would eventually walk hundreds of miles across Manhattan in? It was even more absurd, she said, given that she didn't bat an eye at a late fee or the price of an airline ticket. Good with words, Carly named this “misguided frugality.”
In addition to bad coffee, I will give up misguided frugality.
What’s your coffee story? Send it my way, please!
And, enjoy this Spotify playlist I created and named Coffee & Chocolate.