The First Cup

I remember my first cup of coffee: Dunkin’ Donuts somewhere in “Jersey.” I was an invincible young man who had partied hard the previous night but now faced a morning of brutal labor. I was a furniture mover for North American Van Lines. Sometimes I drove, but I always lifted: extra-long dressers where the idiot owner had left each drawer stuffed with useless items; pool tables—every mover’s nightmare because nothing in this world weighs more than a slate pool table– and the dreaded king size mattress—not so heavy, but awkward to maneuver around corners. When I told my co-worker I wasn’t sure I had a pulse that morning, he suggested coffee. Done!

I couldn’t take it straight so I added cream and sugar—the more cubes, the better. Suddenly, I was ready to tear the roof off of my car. This muscle euphoria lasted until I made my first lift that day. Regardless, I’d become a coffee drinker.

The metamorphosis of my coffee consumption has been ongoing. Fortunately, for my health I cut out the sugar early on, but I did stay with half-and-half and now prefer the organic cream from very happy cows. I did drip coffee for years in a cone. I quickly lost the coffee in the can and started grinding my own beans, even to the point of counting them—72—like Mozart allegedly did. Then came the auto-drip era where I traded taste for speed. What was I thinking?

Now, thanks to Anne, I’m doing the French press method of coffee brewing. This is how coffee was meant to be made. What would life have been if my first cup had been a French press, not stuff from a giant metal container? I might have torn that roof off!