EATING MY WORDS (Coffee, Part II)

We parents eat an awful lot of our words throughout the years. If (1) you talk as much as I do and (2) you like to eat, you have to eat even more of them than most. But I thought I could do worse than follow some excellent examples that I had known. Here’s one: when I was six or seven, my grandfather Pa Jay gave me a pinch of snuff—in order to teach me never to get hooked on tobacco, like he was. It worked! I reeled, and I can’t believe I didn’t vomit, it was so so so so gross. When I was offered cigarettes and/or pot as a teenager, I quickly turned down all such offers.

So when my firstborn was two years old, she asked for a sip of coffee (not quite as dramatic as chewing tobacco, I’ll admit, but this is my story), and I thought, “Yeah, I’ll give her some, and she’ll hate it, and then she won’t get hooked on coffee.”
It worked!
Tah-DAH! I’m a great parent!

A year or so later, I have another two year old, and Krista asks for a sip of my coffee. Knowing now that I am in fact a fabulous mother-and-teacher, I say “Sure.”
And she says “Yum.”
Uh-oh! But no matter; after all, I had a cup with lots of cream and sugar (Ken always says that we like our coffee the way that, if you were to freeze it, it would be coffee ice cream), so I gave her a sip of black coffee. A little cruel admittedly, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
And Krista says “Yum.”
Oh no! Pa Jay’s method is failing me; what to do, what to do? So I give this beautiful baby, who has barely passed her second birthday, a coffee bean to chew.
And Krista says “Yum.”

Now that’s a real coffee drinker—and she has been all these years.

A nice cup of Coffee Mate… hold the creamer

Ken and I aren’t really coffee drinkers; sure, we have the occasional cup when we’re out with folks (we don't inhale), but really, Ken is a hot tea guy, and I’m a cold Diet Coke girl.

But here’s the thing: coffee is available everywhere—and often, for free (Starbucks notwithstanding). Churches offer it; my oil-changing place back home offers it; for crying out loud, even my dentist offers it, and you’d think they’d despise people drinking such teeth-staining stuff.

One summer during college, I drank a LOT of coffee, but again, mainly that was because I was cheap. I worked for a patent attorney, and one of my main jobs was to make sure there was an extremely fresh pot of coffee at all times. I was pretty poor and I hated to waste pretty much anything, so he and his clients would have a cup or two, and I drank the rest—black—all day long! I’m talking 15 cups a day, easy. I figured I was hooked for sure, but in the Fall when I went back to ACU, nary a cup of joe passed my lips.

But here in Uruguay things are different… old people and young people alike drink mate (pronounced MOTT-ay), often many cups a day. It's a culturally distinctive thing similar to the tea ceremonies of Japan--there are special cups you use made from a gourd (also called a mate), fill it all the way with mate leaves which look exactly like dried grass clippings, pour in your hot water, and slurp it through a straw that kind of looks like a spoon. The whole process looks mildly like everyone is sharing drugs through a bong, but the slurping gives the whole thing away. Sadly, I think I would prefer it to be drugs. Why? If you know me AT ALL, you know I hate slurping or smacking sounds; actually, they make me completely nuts. Thus, so far the whole sharing the mate experience isn't one I think I'll import home for keeps.


I’ll tell you another coffee story tomorrow, this one about what a perfect mother I am (ha!).