I had a coffee yesterday morning where I often buy it, in the joint inside the local grocery store because I can pick up a copy of a newspaper and pay for everything at the same time (I hate carrying around change while looking for a vending box). I like the coffee but I don't pretend it's anything other than that. You don't have to latte for me or cappuccino it in any way, shape, size or form, or any of that other razzmatazz that makes it 'foo-foo' coffee. I assume wherever they get the beans from to make the coffee, they pay those folks a fair wage so I don't worry about that either. It's not politics, it's not lifestyle-sometimes a thing is just a thing.
For me, and maybe just for me, coffee is coffee. I drink it in the morning until about nine o'clock and then I stop for the rest of the day. I used to drink gallons of it-literally. I probably drank thirty or more cups of coffee on a daily basis. I always had a cup and knew where the next one was. I drank it, and drink it, for the effect, I think, as much as the taste--a confession you should know comes from someone who drinks instant as well as ground. Heck, back in my Java Jive time, I was often like Walt Garrison, with a pinch of instant between my check and gum.
Back at the coffee counter--it's straightforward enough, American Runs on it and we all stand behind one another and order it to go and then leave. Except for the last couple of weeks, perhaps in honor of the US national Elections they've had TV spots where a person goes from place to place, disparate individual to (even more) disparate individual, asking them to choose one cup or the other. And guess what? (you better sit down for this part, because the suspense may get you.) They win! It's not just about the couches and music.....Of course, two of my favorite artists as a child and even now in my dotage, record for one of the coffee purveyors, just not the winner. "Let your little light shine. Shine on world-wide traffic jams/Honking day and night. Shine on another a$$hole, Passing on the right! Shine on the red light runners/ Busy talking on their cell phones."
Doesn't sound like anyone I know, how about you?
I've never been to the other coffee store. We don't have one in Norwich, yet, or perhaps ever (in light of the current economy) and I'm more than the half way past the 56th year on this orb and don't seem to have missed it. So I guess, I don't care who did what--but I'm troubled by a marketing philosophy for a product, something as humble as coffee, that is presented as a zero-sum game. We just finished with one of these, didn't we? And judging from the comments in the neighborhood and on line and in the media, there are a lot of unresolved issues and hard feelings about that.
One of the hallmarks about life in these United States is freedom of choice and the diversity of selection. You like vanilla, me, maybe not so much. You're an Episcopalian and I'm a born again Rastafarian (hey! it could happen). That doesn't make one of us good and other one bad. It makes us different and yet, at so many levels, still the same. You drive a Ford and I'm a Mopar guy, at least until next Wednesday (kidding, Cerberus!) and we all coalesce and coexist.
We don't have to all like the same thing and we don't have to like something just because everyone else does. Not everything has to be about winning and losing. Not even coffee. Especially coffee. "At the end of the end, It's the start of a journey To a much better place. And this wasn't bad, So a much better place would have to be special. No need to be sad."
-bill kenny
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