I had one of the most peculiar experiences of my college career the other day in Alderman Café. It was about noon on a Sunday and I had gone there to enjoy a little coffee and finish some reading. Unfortunately, the café wasn't scheduled to open until an hour after I arrived. I decided to stick around anyway and stayed in the area with my book.
As time went on, people would appear, hover around the coffee bar, deduce that it wasn't open yet and vanish again. At first this amounted to no more than a trickle of people. Then, about a half hour before opening time, the employees arrived and starting grinding beans and making the other necessary preparations for a day of brewing. Now people could smell blood in the water. It seemed as though the person behind the bar was telling someone every other minute that the place wasn't open yet. By the time the café was open for business, there was a line of the sort you only usually see at the DMV.
Of course, it's practically a truism to say college students love their coffee, but it hadn't struck me until that day in the café just how true that statement is. This probably shouldn't come as any surprise; even insomniac depressives who live outside jackhammer-testing facilities probably get more sleep than most people I know. For better or for worse, we need our caffeine, and when the choice is between the Almighty Java, bulwark of Western culture, and some shady energy drink that resembles battery acid, it's not much of a contest.
So we drink up, and the effects are striking. Many people can't get by without their cup in the morning. If it weren't for that darn subprime mortgage crisis, people might even still be taking out home equity loans to cover their coffee habits. We've also come to demand coffee at all sorts of strange hours -- the coffee joints around here are open until 11 some nights. There's even talk of taking George Washington off the $1 bill and replacing him with that Colombian guy in the poncho. Chemical dependence does funny things to people.
What's more, the psychological dependence can be just as profound. Coffee is very much associated with maturity and our common rites of passage and it confers a certain worldliness on the drinker. As a result, I'm addicted to decaf, which has to qualify me for a place in some sort of asylum. And there are just as many people who are opposed to coffee, not because they dislike the taste, but on philosophical grounds. Simply bring up the subject, and these folks will denounce coffee as the devil's drink. Coffee must be the only beverage to have its own conscientious objectors.
I'll never forget the first time I ordered coffee in a restaurant, in my early teen years. The server looked at me as though I'd asked for a pack of cigarettes. It's not hard to see why this is the case. Bitter, acidic and potentially scalding, coffee falls into that somewhat masochistic class of adult pleasures that also includes prune juice, broccoli and Jimmy Buffett. It's just Not Something We Give To Children. Of course, with teeny-boppers everywhere getting introduced to it gradually through slushy coffee drinks, those boundaries are changing.
Coffee places have even developed their own transactional jargon, which can be baffling to the newcomer. Successfully ordering a beverage in the modern coffee establishment requires an astonishing number of words; the typical drink has a name like "triple-grande-soy-half-caff-no-foam-mochaccino." My family's last Toyota didn't come with that many options. It wouldn't surprise me to see coffee bars start having interpreters on staff. Someday, we'll probably need third-graders to order our lattes in addition to programming our computers.
If you too are caught in coffee's devious web, I feel for you. The best we can do for ourselves may be just to limit ourselves to one mug a day and rationalize it all with some argument about beneficial antioxidants. But whatever you do, hold off on the home equity loan -- at least until the market recovers.
Matt's column runs biweekly Tuesdays. He can be reached at mwaring@cavalierdaily.com.
Read More
Khul Ke Nacho — a celebration of free-spirited dancing
By Malaika Rehman | 3 hours agoThe sea of attendees wearing desi attire and dancing joyfully throughout the night was a reflection of the thriving Pakistani community in and outside of PSA.
Holding onto every grain in the hourglass
By Mai Hukuoka | YesterdayNow that I’m back at school, I have made it my mission to take note of the sneaky passage of time.
Students brave the cold for a whirlwind sorority rush
By Mia Tan | 3 days agoStudents recount a mix of emotions from rush, with some disappointed after dropping from the recruitment process and others ecstatic to join Greek life.
