I quit drinking coffee over the weekend. I lasted about fifteen minutes before giving in and rushing back to the coffee maker, filling it and switching it on and hanging all over it in a blubbering mess of gratitude and apology.
“Why would you quit?” Jack asked, astonished, when I told him later.
“I don’t want a beverage to master me,” I said stubbornly. “No inanimate thing should be the boss of me.”
“Why NOT?” he said. “Life is crappy enough. Why eliminate one of the few pleasures?”
He has a point, although my life is not especially crappy. But for me, drinking coffee is definitely an addiction more than a pleasure. I feel a deep-seated panic at the idea of really giving it up forever.
“So what?” said Jack when I told him this. “One or two cups a day, that’s just a joy, man.” And I could not disagree.
“Jack convinced me to stop giving up coffee,” I told Gene when he came back in the room. I clutched my mug happily to my chest, and I might have crooned to it a little bit.
“Oh, good,” said Gene in a tired voice, glaring at Jack. I wonder what happens to an employee who actively makes his boss’s home a more hyper place to be.
One Response to Sugar and milk