I was introduced to the concept of coffee when I was a child. They would not let me drink it, but I got to smell it percolating on the stove, and I watched my father drink his black coffee and I watched my mother drink her coffee with cream and sugar.
I begged them. But mama always said no, “Donnie, you are too young to drink coffee.”
Little did they know how sneaky I was. Okay, they knew how sneaky I was. I got caught plenty times doing things I was not supposed to do, often resulting in mama cutting a hickory stick. When she threatened to cut a hickory stick that meant I was about to get whacked on the bottom with a small cutting from a bush, whatever was handy.
But I did manage to get away with sampling their coffee. Daddy’s black coffee nearly choked me, was too hot, went down the wrong way, tasted terrible. Mama’s coffee, with its sugary taste and its mellow creamy flavor, was delicious. Don’t tell nobody, but daddy actually let me have a sip of his coffee when mama was out of the kitchen for a minute. Me and daddy had lots of secrets. But even daddy didn’t know I had already sampled mama’s coffee when they were both out of the room. Did that a few times.
I guess that early experience is a reason why I became a cream-and-sugar coffee drinker. Throughout all my working life I drank coffee with cream and sugar, more cream and more sugar as the years went by. By the time I was in my last position in a top-floor, corner office in Charlotte, North Carolina, I was drinking five or 6 cups of coffee every day.
I drank coffee all day long.
It was a while after I stopped working that I was advised to stop drinking coffee because of the caffeine and how it could affect my high blood pressure. So, I stopped altogether. I did not trust my willpower; I stopped buying coffee for home use and started drinking hot tea instead. I have drunk green tea, English Breakfast tea, herb tea, special blended teas, and most recently Earl Grey tea.
But I missed coffee. And then the Covid-19 crap started. I reintroduced myself to coffee when I began to have fast food breakfasts delivered to my house several times a month. Of course, cream and sugar, lots and lots of cream and sugar, were part of every order. Given the circumstances, I just didn’t care about the weight gain that started happening or the potential problems with my blood pressure from drinking coffee. After all, a couple of cups of coffee a few times a month probably weren’t going to hurt that much.
On a few occasions my breakfast order came with coffee but no cream and sugar. I was desperate. I learned that honey and sugar don’t taste the same in coffee, especially if there is no cream. And I learned that Kefir is no substitute for cream. In case you don’t know, Kefir is a fermented milk product that aids in digestion. It’s fine on its own, tastes a little like buttermilk. But in coffee it curdles. Not a pretty sight.
I considered complaining about the absent cream and sugar. But there was no point to it. They weren’t going to send me cream and sugar after I received my incomplete order. And I still did not trust myself to have any of the coffee fixings, including the cream and the sugar, in the house.
So, I had a couple of fast-food breakfasts with lemon water, a sad substitute for coffee with cream and sugar. Some profanity may have slipped past my lips.
It became an anxiety-laden process, opening up those sealed bags that held my breakfast order. Would there be cream and sugar? Or would there be profanity?
Usually, there was cream and sugar. Thank goodness.
Then came that fateful day.
I had placed an order with my favorite fast-food store. I don’t want to give them an unpaid ad, nor do I want to point out that they forgot my dang cream and sugar, so I will not mention that my favorite fast-food store is Chick-Fil-A.
Oops!
There I was, with my bacon, egg and cheese muffin meal, with large hash browns and a large coffee, and no blankety-blank cream and sugar. They remembered the doggone ketchup, which I could have done without, in a pinch. But they forgot the cream. And they forgot the sugar.
I don’t know if you’re anything like me, or whether you are in a situation where your neighbors live on the other side of a condo wall, but I have on occasion been standing in my kitchen … after some profanity accidentally slipped past my lips at a high-volume … and wondered if the neighbors heard that.
The weirdest thing is that on one high-volume occasion, I actually caught myself thinking, “Was that out loud?”
I had been having a few rough days in a row by this point. And I was not in the best of moods. I was really looking forward to this meal, this meal that included coffee with cream and with sugar, cream and sugar that was nowhere to be found inside that sealed bag.
And I can assure you … I looked.
I went to make some lemon water. I was out of lemons.
Being out of lemons is not normally a profanity-provoking situation. And, probably because my recent outburst was still echoing through the rooms, I managed to only think some profanity. (I secretly felt proud of my restraint.)
What I did not realize, was that a life-altering revelation was on the precipice … no, wait … precipice doesn’t mean what I thought it meant (thank goodness I just looked it up).
Let me try that again.
What I did not realize, was that a life-altering revelation was on the … on the … You know, I’m going to have to rewrite that sentence, or come up with the word I’m looking for right there. But right now, I’m hungry and need to stop for breakfast (not a fast-food breakfast this time).
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Okay, I’m back. And it’s not after eating breakfast; it’s been two or three days since I began this little writing project. And I still don’t know the proper word to use instead of “precipice.” Give me a couple of minutes while I go and consult an online thesaurus.
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Okay, here goes:
What I did not realize, was that a life-altering revelation was on the verge of revealing itself … Wait a minute: a revelation was on the verge of revealing itself? I’m gonna have to rewrite that doggone sentence in its entirety.
No, I am just gonna leave it out.
Getting back to the story: wait a second; I can’t remember what I was talking about now. Let me look back.
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Okay, I’m ready.
Fast food meal delivered, coffee but no cream and sugar, couldn’t make lemon water, spoke some profanity in a very loud voice. Okay. Let’s start from there.
I put the bacon, egg and cheese biscuits and the hash browns on a big round plate and put them in the microwave for a few seconds to warm them up. Then, without thinking, I poured the black coffee into a glass mug. I stood there in the kitchen looking at that coffee. Didn’t really want to waste it. This would be the third or fourth time I had poured perfectly good coffee down the drain. I decided to take it into the bedroom with me, where I would stack up some pillows to lean against, then turn on the television to watch a rerun of a favorite show while I ate breakfast, with my “black” coffee on the nightstand beside me.
As usual, the breakfast was tasty. But my throat got dry and I was thirsty. Usually, there is a glass of water next to wherever I’m sitting. But I forgot to do that this time. So I reached over and took a sip of the black coffee. It was my only option, at the moment.
Now that was surprising.
Throughout my coffee drinking history, I drank most of my after-breakfast coffee with cream and sugar by itself, with the rare exception of a piece of pastry. Drinking black coffee with a tasty meal is quite a bit different from drinking black coffee by itself.
In fact, by the end of that meal, I had determined that I preferred black coffee to coffee with cream and sugar when eating a meal.
Somehow, that option never seemed inviting in all my years of coffee drinking. There I was, finding myself in a situation where there was no other good option. And I liked it. I liked it a lot.
It was a life-altering revelation.
No, it wasn’t! No, it wasn’t!
I can’t believe how much effort I went through as I tried to use that clickbait-level phrase … and it was never going to ring true. I don’t know why I wanted to use it; sometimes my brain has a mind of its own.
My life has not been altered by this discovery. I still can’t drink much coffee, because of my blood pressure issues. But at least I know that under the right circumstances, black coffee is delicious. Plus, no more accidental profane outbursts, because of no cream and sugar with my order.
On the other hand, if they ever forget my coffee … (I probably shouldn’t finish that sentence.)