Coffee Versus Tea

When this topic was posed to me, I thought, how can I choose? Tea, who is there for me at the first sign of a cold and stays with me during those long sick days. Even coming back around on hot summer days, adorned with lemon, sweating seductively into a cardboard coaster. Oh, and there are so many varieties….When I visit my sister I drink black tea with milk and sugar, other times it is green tea I crave. I have never been one to refuse a cup of Sleepytime and yet I think mint is my all time favorite.

All that being said, the smell of coffee wafting in from the kitchen to my bed is akin to a siren’s cry. I get up knowing I will soon be in the sweet embrace of caffeine that will carry me through the day. I have to shake the thought of a tangy cup of lemon zinger and remember it is coffee who sustains me. That black tea with milk and sugar my sister is so fond of making only gets me through to unearthing the old french press she has banished to her garage.

I am a fair-weather friend to tea. I’ll see tea at a party and we can pick-up where we left off, never skipping a beat. We’ll make plans for lunch or to get together at the pub some night after work, but we both know neither of us will call. Tea has grown used to hearing my hoarse voice pleading, beckoning it when I succumb to my seventh cold of the year and it always comes to my rescue.

But, it is coffee I need. Coffee who at 22 made me feel like a haggard old bag lady when I dismissed it one morning. Coffee who when neglected exacts its revenge in the form of fatigue and headaches. Maybe it does taste like a shoe, but I don’t care. It’s my shoe.