I Say Boob Three Times in This Post

Like most big and important things in the world, I missed it.

National Coffee Day.  It was on Monday.

The day I decided to drink a pot of coffee at home before going out into the world where coffee is free.

Like I do every day.  Except coffee isn’t free every day.  I mean, unless you steal it.  And who would do that?

Like a boob, I read several Facebook posts from people rhapsodizing about National Coffee Day and I read the lists of places where it was free.  Most of those places are convenient to my home.  Wow, I thought to myself.  One could just drink free coffee all day.

And like a boob, I didn’t even take part.

“Who cares,” you may think.  “What’s the big deal?  So you missed a measly free cup of coffee.  Take a chill pill, woman.  Slow your roll.”

To that I say Excuse me, good sir.  Coffee is very important.  Very. 

Do people still say chill pill?

When I was a kid, coffee was a thing.  Seemingly as important as water, the black liquid filled cups and mugs and pots and was present before, at or after each meal.  Was it used for digestive purposes?  A pick-me-up?  Every adult I knew drank it.  Most took theirs black.  Coffee was present at every holiday gathering, every church dinner.  Every waitress at every restaurant wielded a brown-handled glass carafe filled with steaming hot coffee.  A small bowl filled with tiny plastic containers of coffee creamer on every table served as entertainment and I built teetering towers using every one.

 After high school I sat across from a friend and watched as he chewed a tiny hole in the bottom of a creamer and squirted the contents into his cup.  We would talk and laugh and drink mugs of cream and sugar and a little coffee and smoke cigarettes between bites of our omelets at Denny’s because you could do that back then.

Coffee time at my husband’s grandmother’s house is a big deal, and has been for years.  Her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren spill out of the farmhouse kitchen on weekend mornings and they make pots and pots of coffee, one right after the other.   She has the kind of coffeemaker that can make a pot of coffee in three minutes.

My husband and I stopped taking cream and sugar in our coffee several years ago, when we discovered that we drank a lot of coffee and could not really afford the added calories.  We learned how to drink it black.  We got one of those three-minute coffeemakers, too.

I start each day with a cup (pot) of coffee.  It’s a comfort, a desire, a love.

And I missed National Coffee Day.

Like a boob.

*******

This post inspired by:

Mama Kat's Writing Workshop

Prompt #1: September 29^th is National Coffee Day.  How do you like your cup?