Coffee

This post is about coffee and why I do not drink it.

I do not drink coffee.  It is not because I do not want to, it is just that I cannot.  I have tried, on numerous occasions and failed to enjoy the caffeine running in my veins (if that is what happens to caffeine when it is ingested). 

Hopping on the coffee-lover wagon is not as easy as it looks, especially for rookies.  Believe me, the "grab a hot cup of java (or three) and Instagram it with an iPhone, uber-hipster, awkward adult person, halfway to Yuppie" subculture is enticing, really; I would like to buy into that.  But this antagonistic relationship with coffee dates back to my early days, as a preschooler.

I hate to blame my parents for everything wrong in my life, but they are the reason why I am the girl who orders rooibos tea without milk.  It is quite simple (take notes because this will be helpful when you have a child one day) if you feed your toddler Milo enough times, eventually when they encounter coffee or caffeinated tea, they will refuse it... because when you are five years old, Milo kicks hot-beverage ass.  This is why it has been so easy for me to abstain from coffee, that and all the other times I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience whenever I had drunk coffee.

In my experience, drinking coffee is not the problem, it is the two hours after consumption that weird me out a little. I start feeling like a rabid squirrel. Restless and edgy, everything becomes warm, but not mildly; extremely warm, hot like my face wants to melt off.  And then the unexplainable thirst, like the guy in the Ingram's advertisement, stranded in the desert.  Only no matter how much water I drink, it is never enough to extinguish the lava in my belly! (Okay, that was just a metaphor to explain my discomfort).

Then again, I may be drinking it wrong (which could be a contributing factor to why I have not been able to become acclimated with the task).  Whenever I drink hot beverages like coffee or tea, I never add sugar.  Sugar drowns out the taste and I lose the essence of the coffee.  I do not find the taste ghastly either, I prefer to taste my coffee for what it is than have it smothered with an unnecessary ingredient (besides if it was meant to taste sweet, it would have, or maybe I am just thinking about this too seriously and starting to evaluate coffee the way I evaluate humans).

However, I have tried decaf and it was quite pleasant.  In fact I could drink that daily; although, it probably defeats the purpose of coffee (Can you see how I am not even rookie-enough for this?). 

Never mind-  this attempt to convince myself that my reasons for not drinking coffee are valid has been fruitless.  I will stick to the rooibos; I will probably live longer too.