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CafeatAugust 16, 2006 Notice how often people blame their lapses on insufficient caffeination? They don't understand what a colleague is trying to tell them: "Sorry, I haven't had my coffee." They post a monumentally obtuse e-mail then semi-apologize with "That's what I get for writing anything before I've had my coffee." They get to work late: "We ran out of coffee." My morning ritual begins with a pot of strong black tea (current favorites are Yunnan Fancy and Assam Golden Tip) laced with milk, but I can't recall ever trying to weasel out of a stupidity by saying "I haven't had my tea." It's much more common to blame foolishness on overindulgence: "Sorry, I was under the influence of mocha chip ice cream" or the all-purpose "Christ, was I drunk last night." I start my day with tea, but I drink hot coffee when I'm out and iced coffee when I'm in. So far I haven't noticed that it enhances my perception, improves my disposition, or raises my IQ. It doesn't even keep me awake -- although when I'm wired anyway a mid-evening hit of coffee seems to make it worse, and too much coffee on an empty stomach makes me queasy. Until recently I've taken "I haven't had my coffee" as an excuse on the order of "I gave at the office" and "The check is in the mail." No one believes any of it; they're all just ways to get someone off your back. If you ever came back with "Does coffee really make you more tactful? You wrote something really ugly at 9:36 yesterday morning and I know for a fact you'd had two mugs of high-test before that," the other person might think you'd just dropped in from another planet. These days I'm thinking that discretion is the better part of valor. Just as we've learned not to make jokes about shoe bombs and nitro toothpaste in the airport security line, or gossip about the al-Qaida potluck we attended in Kabul before the war, we've got to stop attributing extraordinary powers to coffee. Even if we're jesting, and even if (especially if) it's all true. Because people are listening, and some of those people have cousins who have neighbors who have co-workers who have friends who work at places like NIH, MIT, the CDC, and the CIA. We live in an age where the most innocuous events tend to spin -- or, rather, get spun -- out of control. Imagine Congress becoming interested in the intelligence-, perception-, and endurance-enhancing properties of coffee. Imagine the unfair-trade coffee producers pouring money into the research, in a short-sighted effort to blow those fair-trade do-gooders and their 10-bucks-a-pound beans out of the market. Not that additional funding will be needed, once Homeland Security gets hold of the idea. Forget the color-coded alert system: if it's got anti-terrorist possibilities, they'll get carte blanche. Imagine athletes being stripped of their medals, math geniuses stripped of their PhDs, Miss Americas stripped of their crowns, all because there turned out to be traces of coffee in their bloodstreams at the time of their victory. Imagine coffee being added to the controlled substances list. Instant coffee is Class D: you probably won't get busted for possession, especially if you live in a blue state, but if you get caught dealing it's three strikes and you're out. Espresso is Class A: one conviction and your house can be seized and sold under the racketeering laws. The supply of heroin will dry up: all available cargo space in planes, boats, cars, and backpacks will have been given over to coffee. To buy a mug in a kitchenware or souvenir shop, you'll be required to sign an affidavit that the implement won't be used for the ingestion of coffee. The right wing and the left will battle ferociously over whether Melitta filters can be sold legally, and whether the FBI needs a warrant to search household garbage for coffee-stained paper cups. It could happen here -- but it doesn't have to. All we have to do is drink below their radar. No more attributing psychotropic powers to coffee. (It's OK, though, to claim that it gets out stubborn stains that nothing else will.) If you need to excuse a faux pas at some early hour, say it's because you haven't had your oatmeal, or you have but you were out of raisins.
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