What Do You Take in Your Coffee Enema? - column

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

How Do You Take Your Coffee?

A famous actress – let us call her Ms. Coffee – suggests a somewhat different way of taking one’s morning cuppa.

Is there something wrong with the way we take our coffee now?

Coffee is a celebration of humanity. The morning cup of reveille pleasantly eases us from the happiness of sleep and into a quiet determination to make the work day a brilliant success.

The driver packs his Thermos along with his bills of lading, the office or factory worker takes ten for a recharge with others around the table in the break room, the copper takes a break from patrol down at the Stop ‘N’ Rob, retirees cluster at the supermarket coffee table every morning around nine, the Navy chief petty officer is out of uniform without his paws grasping a coffee cup, and the Air Canada cabin attendant dutifully snarls to the passengers that there is no coffee.

From chalices of glass, ceramics, paper, foam, or plastic, drinking coffee or tea with co-workers and friends almost seems to constitute a rite of secular communion. Except on Air Canada, where there is no coffee, and how dare you ask.

Ms. Coffee, though, suggests that we should take our coffee through the other end of the alimentary canal.

This would probably displace the mirth (Macbeth III.iv.109) at the corner table. Or any table. “Well, hey, I’d better get back to the shop floor; that number three machine’s been acting wonky…”

Ms. Coffee alludes to the, um, assumption of coffee via the nether regions as a deep detoxification, a supercharge, and a whole lotta other stuff using buzzy words. Further, Ms. Coffee refers the reader to a site that for over a hundred dollars sells an appliance for this, um, experience.

The drugstore sells such medical appliances a whole lot cheaper. If you’re interested, that is.

Ms. Coffee’s own website is amusing – she’s even got a real, live shaman who shaves his head and looks all spiritual and stuff – and she’s got lots of pills and merchandise to sell you, and she is herself that famous metaphorical picture of health.

But – with one t – we are all well-advised to visit a nurse-practitioner or physician for our health care needs, not a website.

And, hey, how do you take your coffee?

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