By Carl Sampson
It has been 9 days, 10 hours, and 42 sec…. I mean, 43 seconds. That’s how long it’s been since I drank my last cup of coffee.
I didn’t quit because I h-h-had to. I mean, it’s not like I was a-a-addicted or anything. I-I-I could quit anytime I wanted. After all, c-c-coffee is just another drink,
r-r-right?
I’ve drunk coffee a long time. I remember the first cup I ever had. I was a cub report for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner in 1975, and my job was to cover borough planning commission meetings. In those days, the meetings lasted three hours, give or take an eternity.
I don’t know how many readers have sat through a planning commission meeting, but they can best be described as black holes for time. People talk for hours. If they did something, it was news, but the only way to find out was to go to the meeting.
There I was, scribbling notes just to stay awake. Finally, during a break, I was willing to try anything just to keep awake. I decided to check out the coffee. I put some in a foam cup, added three sugar cubes, poured in some of that white stuff and stirred it with one of those little red plastic sticks.
I took a sip, and I was hooked. All of a sudden, the sun came out, every sentence uttered by a planning commissioner made total sense and time actually sped up.
I liked that coffee stuff.
From that moment on, coffee was my constant companion. I’d have a cup in the morning, one for the road and who knows how many at those meetings.
I continued to drink coffee for years, until I started hanging around the office more and drinking coffee less. Oh, I’d have a cup or two every once in a while but not the gallons I drank before.
Then, in the early 1990s, my wife and I spent a summer in Seattle, house sitting for some friends. All over town were these little coffee shacks. At gas stations, at grocery stores — even by themselves. They were everywhere.
I stopped at one, and it changed my life. This wasn’t the jet fuel from the planning commission coffee urn. That was magic in a cup. Smooth, strong, sensual — oh, my.
My life changed in 12 ounces.
From that point on, I constantly had a coffee cup in my hand.
I’d drive from coffee shack to coffee shack, picking up a mocha here, a latte there, sipping my way through the day. My coffee habit has continued since that time.
I quit coffee just to see if I could, but I also am leery of something that would make me suffer if I left it. Though coffee may not have hurt me in the long run, the lack of coffee won’t hurt, either.
I still like coffee. When I go to the grocery store, my favorite spot is the coffee aisle. I stand there, breathing deeply, enjoying that aroma.
If you ever need to find me, that’s where I’ll be.
