January 28, 2024
By Arthur H. Gunther III
We are all possessive – of things, people, places, memories, even coffee cups. Java tastes different in a vessel not of favorite fancy. It’s like being with pleasurable company, but not the same crowd – something is missing, though the brew is appreciated.
Extend that “it’s mine” thought to a chair that is your cozy though its springs may be gone, fabric torn. Or a pal’s house where you can always grab a favorite corner or seat at the kitchen table.
With coffee cups – tea too – it just isn’t the same without “the one” even if the greatest, tastiest, most-aromatic offering is poured. Silly, of course, not unlike the memory of a sixth-grade birthday party where in all innocence, the lights went out and you lightly kissed someone only to hear the call to switch partners. There was always the preferred one you hoped to get back to.
A day begins with coffee or tea, and for most on the run, it is the brew in a shop’s nondescript paper cup or from a vacuum bottle, but at home, half asleep, looking totally tossed from the night’s passing, your chilled hands warming from their embrace of your favorite cup, there is no greater friend in that moment.
No one ever better touch your cup.
The writer is a retired newspaperman.
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