Coffee Talk - Ralph Myers (best books under 200 pages txt) 📗

Coffee Talk


“Wake up and smell the coffee, Bob. Women scare you.”

“I’m just taking a break,” Bob lied.

I opened my eyes and I was still in the booth – pinned next to the wall. Bob was two divorces and five kids old with his breather time nearing the five year mark. So Matt was on target and I had to bail him out.

“You want scary? My Aunt Marjorie in perm curlers – that’s scary. A woman in Nordstrom’s with ‘cute’ shoe perception – that’s scary…And broccoli – don’t forget broccoli.”

“Welcome back,” Bob laughed. “We missed you while you were gone.”

I took a slug of Joe and smacked my lips. "I was checking my beverage for floaters, Bob. Gone is something I’m saving for ‘later.’ Gone means, I'm okay, but you may want to open a window,"

"Gone means, ‘Take these Cub tickets and put them where the sun doesn't shine!’”

“Gone means never having to say you're sorry.”

“And scary is this conversation.”

“I wonder who the person was that looked at a coffee bean and thought, "Hmmm, I could drink that."

“My grandfather on my mother's side - Grandpa Baumgardner - spent his life attaching handles to cups. You didn't know that, did you? He put my mother through nursing school making dreams come true for coffee drinkers. This cup I'm drinking from - it is a descendant of my grandfather.”

“I think I’ve got a left-handed cup.”

“I bet the right-handed cups are dirty.”

“Normally, I'm right-handed, but I can drink both ways. I was born with two upper lips, which gives me unfair advantage. They discovered the anomaly during a sports physical back in high school.”

“Well…My blood is actually darker than, say, tea or juice drinker blood, If you look at a sample under a microscope, there are grounds in my cells. At first, doctors were mystified. "What's up?" I asked, and nobody said a word. They just squirmed and frantically cleaned their lenses. And it wasn't until I got a second opinion from Folgers that the truth came out...Since then, I've started using filters when I brew things.”

“Coffee is my life. I think of it often. I write when I'm away.”

“This is beginning to sound like therapy.”

“How does that make you feel?”

“Like I’m talking and I can’t shut up.”

“Life is short and talk is cheap.”

“Life is a Petri dish and the world, its incubator…We’re bacteria cells.”

“Personally, I think we’re in an equation. Newsweek or somebody had an article on it. They said the matrix for the universe is a math equation.”

“Really?”

“No. And it’s a big one, too. If printed in common arial six font it would be larger than the Milky Way, and heavy enough to bend truth. From space it looks like a man eating pizza.”

“A planet full of Einsteins could barely scratch an itch on its backside, it's so complex.”

“Variables, cubes, tangents and strange symbols clog its intricate network of whatnots.” No Earthly creature can fathom its relevance. Yet, despite its elusive nature, all living things wind up there - people, animals, birds, fish - you name it – ”

“Wind up where?”

“In the matrix of the universe…However, bugs and worms must use the back entrance.”

“You know the tunnel that we go through when we die? They’ve located it in Kentucky.. It is extremely round – moreso than a perfect circle, and more spherical than an overweight orb; it has no beginning or end, dear boy. And galaxies spin perpetually within its hollowed chamber without any detectable wind-up apparatus.”

“Nobody understands how this is accomplished, but many suspect it's a non-union Force.”

“Of course, there are some who believe we're the ones spinning while galaxies watch, and that it's VERY union.”

“Whatever the case, it should be noted that several of these theorists wear mismatched shoes and spend considerable time pedaling naval fuzz art. And though puzzling questions remain, one thing is certain: we're not sure about the afterlife; and two, people die anyway...two things are certain…three, actually, if perishables get taxed.”

There was a l-o-n-g pause then as we weighed the implications.

“Did you know...A few years ago, primate blogs were discovered in a Qumran cave. (This is a coffee story, I think. Or, at least, a story that coffee plays a part in.) Anyway, here's how the story goes - a near-sighted archeologist (a part-timer) was out archeologing one night when, quite by accident, he excavated himself into a Starbucks of an off-shoot cavern near Guatemala City, and he happened upon an old stack of coffee drinking diaries that were hidden behind an obscure latte machine.

"’Looks like ancient primate notations,’ the archeologist said. And sure enough, two other lost archeologists agreed...(Scholars believe these writings date back to a time just prior to coherent language.)

Carbon dating placed the blogs somewhere between the Cumulo-Cirrus Noggindwarf age and a Leave It to Beaver commercial that happened, mid-twentieth century. There is strong belief ancient apes wrote these diaries! Or, so the story goes.“

“Apparently a unique sect of simians (English students) had frequented the Starbucks between classes, and they wrote their grunts down while quaffing coffee that they purchased with Sunday paper coupons. Of course, Starbucks denies they EVER permitted discounts (now or then), but one must remember these blogs were chiseled during a time when cultural emphasis focused more on weaker blends of coffee that were still being tested...blends that were derived for strawberry's end of the Neapolitan plane of creamers, back when strawberry was a favored flavor; perhaps before French Vanilla existed. And long before archeologists roamed the earth. (This was in the days when a deck of cards only had five clubs and three spades...LONG ago.)...Anyway, the diaries were an interesting find. As one Starbucks customer mused (after using a blog as a napkin), "This sect was of a curious genome." Then he ate his cherry before wiping some foam off of his upper lip (which he only had one of).”

“To my knowledge, the dude left the diaries behind for the next guy to clean up. Or, so the story goes.”

“And we had better head back upstairs, ourselves. It’s time.”

And so it was…You know what? Coffee makes me feel young…and women aren’t nearly as scary as my drinking buddies.

Publication Date: 11-12-2011

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