Time for a cuppa?

As I’m waiting for a recruiter to call me back, and drinking a pot of Trader Joe decaffeinated green tea, it seems appropriate to comment on a link passed on to me a while ago by one of my quasi-regular correspondents.

In this piece, the author excoriates anyone so uncouth as to add milk to Earl Grey tea. Well, I respect the diversity of reasons to get your knickers in a twist, but I have to say that I so loathe that particular type of tea that just the mention of “earl” in conjunction with “grey” starts my gag reflex process.

I don’t know why that should be—perhaps the corollary to “I like what I like” is “I puke what I don’t”.

But it is kind of interesting how many lines in the sand people are willing to draw over which types of beverage are acceptable and how you must prepare them—or else be thought a barbarian/ignoramus/rube/whatever. Martinis and tea seem to bring this out in in them.

(When he arrived at Princeton, the physicist Richard Feynman was asked whether he took his tea with milk or lemon; he famously replied that he’d have both. Thus was born the title of his first book of memoirs, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! But you can get away with that sort of thing if you’re a genius. Also if you don’t give a hoot about anyone else’s ideas on beverage consumption.)

Even George Orwell got into the act. Me—I don’t much care how you make it or drink it, as long as you don’t make me consume it your way. (I have a theory on that warming-the-pot thing, though: if the British actually used, you know, central heating, their teapots might not be so cold that they suck the warmth out of boiling water, so that when it pours out of the kettle it’s instantly rendered tepid. Just a thought.)

I do agree with the author’s opinion on the Brits making coffee. Those people rely entirely too heavily on instant, and it’s always a crapshoot as to whether you’re going to get decent stuff outside of an actual, you know, coffeeshop. Even restaurants don’t seem to have their hearts in it. Although they may just be trying to encourage table turnover. Could be.

I’m not what you’d call an expert on the black brew. I learned to drink it on the side of Fort Lee, Va., closest to Hopewell, “The Chemical Capital of the South”. It was made in urns by NCOs who didn’t consider it “coffee” until you could stand a spoon in it without leaning it against the side of the cup. (And the cups were all Styrofoam. Ah, happy times.)

In fairness, you needed to get it to that state before you drowned out the taste of the Hopewell water that was used to make it. At that time, I drank it black, but added sugar to it. Sometime in the intervening years I stopped doing even that—but of course I have raised the quality standards of what I ingest.

Like my coffee-mentors, I used to drink rather a lot of it, by which I mean that I’d typically get into the office around 0700 and drink an entire pot before anyone else showed up. Until one day I needed to have fasting blood work done—you know, you can’t have eaten or drunk anything except water since the previous midnight. And the earliest appointment I could get was for 1100.

By about 0900, I thought my skull would implode. And by the time the phlebotomist stuck me, I was hoping it would. She drew the blood and then brought me a cup of coffee from a pot that had been sitting cold for some time. I’m here to tell you that it plumb scared me that as I took the first swallow I could feel the iron bands relaxing around my head.

I decided I didn’t need to be that dependent on any substance that didn’t require corkscrews and I’ve been a decaf drinker pretty much ever since.

Naturally, here in the Valley they call Silicon (as was the case in the Emerald City) you’re viewed with suspicion if you order decaf. But I reckon that any group of people so freaking dependent on Starbucks really has lost its street cred when it comes to looking down their noses at what I choose to drink.

Like Feynman, I really don’t much give a toss what they think. Back in Virginia, I was once making a pot of decaf in the marketing department kitchen when the VP of marketing (to whom I referred as the Mughul Emperor, on account of his management style and charm) started giving me stick about it.

I looked him in the eye and said, “[Mughul Emperor], I’m the way I am and I don’t do caffeine. You do the math.”

He shut up and backed away.