The Skillz Report

The Coffee Is In Charge

 

(originally written 12/20/11)

 

I’ll never forget an exchange I had with my friend Mits shortly after we met in August of 2010. It was at softball; we were in the dugout. She wasn’t exactly energetic on this day, and she blamed it on skipping her regular dose of coffee that day. While I was outwardly supportive and understanding, internally I questioned how powerful that stuff really was—it couldn’t really affect the functionality of a healthy young adult so dramatically…could it?

 

Yes it could. I know this because I’ve got the daily coffee itch now myself—an itch that, left unscratched,  turns me from a strong, virile, vibrant, charming young man into, well, Grampa Simpson. Confused, slow, irritable, capable of falling asleep in a SNAP. I’m not kidding about that. My own dependence on the brown stuff is at a level where without it, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn I’d fallen asleep while running to first base.

 

Before 2003, I didn’t even know how to make coffee. My now-ex was a java loyalist, and she soon converted me to the dark side. I’d never had the stuff or wanted to have the stuff before. An old friend of mine, Cory, would often extend invitations to Starbucks. “What am I gonna do in a Starbucks?” I’d say, before turning him down. Today, I’d be all over those invites before he finished his sentence. If only he hadn’t kissed off our entire clique a decade ago. But I’m not here to talk about the past.

 

Daily Folgers and Bi/Tri-Daily Starbucks frappes pose formidable obstacles in my reducing goals, because I go cream-heavy on Folgers and frappes are basically 20 oz. servings of whipped cream. Not only that, but I tend to wash my coffee down with a pastry or two.

Some of you would simply instruct me to find a way to give up coffee. And I would—were it not for the simple fact that I drive for a living, often for over ten hours daily. Surely you guys would not endorse a coffee recess if you were convinced, as I am, that it is the only thing keeping my work van from becoming (ironically) somebody’s new coffee table.

 

So friends, if you approach me and it appears that I’ve been drugged, don’t get the medics.

Get the mocha.

And bring an extra for Mits…