Within my first couple of weeks of working at Starbucks, a long, long time ago, I was required to attend a little four-hour session that the company called ‘Starbucks University’, or more coloquially, ‘Coffee College’.
Essentially, we were supposed to learn how to taste the stuff properly, and pick out subtle nuances in origin, roast, grind, and brew.
For those new employees who did not enjoy coffee (but simply wanted a job in which they did not use a deep-fryer) this class was absolute torture. I saw more faces of abject horror when they were force-fed Gold Coast Blend than on a crowd of Presbyterians stumbling out of ‘The Passion of The Christ’.
For me, however. — a coffee lover from way back — it was rather fun; I could finally discuss everything I liked about my cuppa with the proper terminology, and even a soupcon of flair. Or pretension.
We tried sixteen different coffees during that four hour span, from the most smoky of roasts, to the most citrusy of blends. I learned that lighter-tasting coffees had a higher caffeine content, since the wonder narcotic wasn’t as deeply purged (by the heat of the roasting process) as it was with the darker ones.
I learned the key flavour differences between Indonesian and Central American beans. I learned which grind goes with which coffee maker, and the three most important words in brewing: ‘filter the water’. I was taught to speak about coffee like most people talk about wine, using words like “earthy”, “woodsy”, “full finish”, “fruity bouquet” and “spicy”.
I felt like a pro.
In the midst of all this information overload, the instructor cautioned us to only take a measured sip of each blend, and to pace ourselves according to the length of the class. The thing was, I hadn’t had anything to eat prior to the session, so I kept finishing each little french-pressed cup they gave me just to quell the growling in my stomach.
No one noticed I was downing all my testers, and they definitely didn’t notice the guy in the next seat sneaking me his so he wouldn’t have to choke them back. By the end of the four hours, I had consumed somewhere between 16 and 20 cups of coffee. It may have been as many as 25, but I stopped counting when I started hearing voices.
When my dad arrived to get me, I was moving much like the Road Runner — little clouds of dust swirled up in my wake, and you would only see me leave a destination, then suddenly arrive at the next.
On the car ride home, I proceeded to relate everything I’d learned in the course of the last four hours, in 45 minutes. Not by summarizing, mind you, but by talking exceptionally fast. My dad just remained silent, awestruck by both my information retention, and the light buzzing emanating from my lips when I stopped speaking for a second or two.
Upon our return home, I attempted to begin the tutorial again with my mother. My dad tried to stop me, simply to spare her my diatribe, but my head swiveled around a full 360 degrees, and I focused on him with red, glowing eyes.
“I want to tell her. She must know.” I think I even hissed. He backed away, and retreated upstairs.
My mother sensed that something scary was afoot, and brought me a large glass of milk, hoping to create an internal latte of sorts to calm me down. Then she sat down at the table to begin making prototypes for her crafting class the next day. I quickly joined her at the table, much to her horror.
I hated crafts. I never wanted to try anything she did, but all of a sudden, I was there, seizing at the hot glue gun and paintbrushes, creating new works of art not destined for MOMA. She let me proceed, knowing that it was best just to ride out the wave of chaotic energy. Whenever I would finish a “project”, she would hand me another set of unrelated materials, and off I would go.
I got bored of this rather quickly, though, and decided that I would email every friend I had.
Unfortunately, my father was on the family computer. Normally, this would mean that I would just come back in an hour, and see if he’d finished up. That would not be the game plan tonight. I stood directly behind him, and began asking, “Are you done now?” every minute or so.
He ignored me after the tenth time, but still I remained, rocking back and forth on the balls of my feet, muttering under my breath. He stood it as long as he could, then vacated the chair with a sigh. I tried to carry on an MSN conversation with a friend of mine, but I couldn’t control my fingers on the keyboard. The simple sentence:
“Hey, how are you?”
came out as:
“heyhowareyoui’mdoingreallygoodijusthadcoffeeclassican’tfeelmyfeetanymoreohohohohohohohoh:)”
He stopped responding after a bit.
When I got tired of speed Minesweeper, I decided to go pick a fight with my brother, who looked at me as though I were an angry, drug-addled teen in an after-school special. He closed the door to his room.
No one wanted to play with me anymore. I decided to go to my own space, and putter a bit. I remember that I was singing “99 Luftballoons”, over and over:
Dann singe ich ein Lied fuer dich
Von 99 Luftballons
Auf ihrem Weg zum Horizont
Denkst du vielleicht g’rad an mich
Dann singe ich ein Lied fuer dich
Von 99 Luftballons
Und dass sowas von sowas kommt
I don’t speak German.
I tried to call another friend, but he was in a bad cell area in his car; he told me he would call me back when his signal improved. This didn’t satisfy me at all…I kept ringing him back, and letting it cut out (”Meg, seriously, I am in a bad zone!”), until he finally turned off his phone.
I had no idea what to do now, until the notion of reorganizing everything I owned popped into my head. Bear in mind, it was midnight at this point, so the crashing of drawers, not to mention the sudden, violent clearing-off of shelves, was not considered kosher noise. My mother came to the door, and opened it just a crack, in case I lunged.
“You might want to start getting ready for bed, dear.” She was very pale.
So I did. I brushed my teeth hard for a good twenty minutes, until my gums cried out for mercy. Then I decided to brush my hair, too. I’d always heard that a hundred strokes every night made your hair glossy and growth-happy, so I proceeded to smack at my head with a comb.
The thing about brushing hair is that you can only do it in one direction. I was experiencing some confusion with that concept right then, and ended up with the toothy implement snarled just above my ear. I left it there, and went down to grab a midnight snack.
I recall eating maraschino cherries, olives, pearl onions, pickles… anything where you had to shove your hand hard into the jar to get at them. When my hand couldn’t do the job, I began wildly stabbing at the floating goodies with a knife. Not a fork, not a spoon, but a knife. Eventually the sound of clanging metal against glass drew my mother to my side again, and she removed the weapon from my hand.
“Time for bed, now. Really.” I followed her up the stairs, and she tucked me in, as though I were five again. Except she tucked me really hard, wrapping me up like a mummy, and placing weighted objects on top of me to hold me down… just kidding.
Actually, she just used the leather straps that we’d purchased during my flailing phase, and squeezed them up to the last notch… just kidding. Actually, she just tucked firmly, and ran out of the room, slamming the door behind her. I thought I heard a dresser being pushed up against it, but they all claim that wasn’t the case. I went to say my prayers, and it came out like some weird combination of tongues and Tourette’s.
Lying there, in the peaceful darkness, I had Timothy Leary moments of creativity. I planned new civilizations. I designed new kitchen gadgets. I cured the common cold. I believed I could speak to dolphins. I wrote free verse. I visualized a Rubick’s Cube, and solved the puzzle 18 times.
I levitated over my bed for a short time, while being attended by wee angels in Starbucks aprons. I wrote the ultimate Op-Ed article for the Times. I planned my wedding to John Cusack. Eventually, I drifted off to sleep, sometime around 5 am, while doing Latin verb declensions in an Inspector Clouseau accent.
I woke to find my family peering in on me, about seven hours later. My head was thumping as though I’d just partied with Keith Richards, and my scalp was sore from the comb lodged in my locks. The sheets were everywhere, having been kicked off sometime in the midst of my purple haze.
“How are you feeling, sweetie?” I recalled my father’s peculiar tone from the time I’d been on Demerol after wrist surgery. It was careful, measured… ready for anything.
All in all, I think I was okay. I felt a little battered, but ready for the day ahead.
“I’m fine, I’m fine…” I said, swinging my quivery legs out to meet the floor. “I just need a coffee.”
