Confessions of a Tea Drinker.

I drink tea. If asked, I actually prefer it over coffee. There, I’ve said it. However, I love everything about coffee. I like the cups. I love the klatch. I adore the smell. I just don’t really like the taste. It is freakishly odd, I know.

My coffee has to be doctored enough that it doesn’t taste like coffee any longer. I am the person in that line at Starbucks who can make a paragraph out of ordering a cup of coffee.

“I’ll take a café latte, mocha, skim, heavy froth, heavy sugar, cinnamon, whipped cream, chocolate curls. Extra shot of chocolate syrup, sugar free please. Grande, with a sleeve. ….” And on it goes.

Three hours later, I somehow magically, get a coffee…which really isn’t a coffee at all. It is more an amalgamation, a concoction of ingredients, of which coffee makes up a very small part. But in the mean time I can stand there and smell the coffee. I can fondle the coffee equipment that looks so cool. I mean, c’mon…who hasn’t looked at a coffee press and thought that they wanted to be cool enough to get up and grind their own beans, and stand there with the distilled water and the press making “real” coffee. I could almost force down a cup, just for the coolness factor.

The coolness factor of coffee is undeniable. Really, who makes songs about tea? What? “I’m a little teapot” But then, there is coffee, and we get cool…not just cool, but Carley Simon cool…”Clouds in my coffee…” And then there is “The Coffee Song” by Sinatra. God, I mean really, is there any comparison?

But, there is me….I am a hanger on, a poser. I just try to hang out with the cool coffee drinking crowd and try to look convincing. I throw away my tea bag and doctor my tea and then I keep the lid on so no one can tell what I am really drinking. I stand around and comment on what great coffee this is. How the flavors meld, the overtones, the undertones…etc. I can talk the talk of a coffee drinker. And I am like that guy on the back cover of the comic books…the one who always got sand kicked in his face and lost his girl? Yeah..I just wish I had the guts to go up to a Starbucks counter and order a “Columbian, Grande, black.” Now that will put hair on your chest.