Flashes of Panic

I don’t remember many details of my morning ritual in high school, whatever those steps were that got me to class more or less on time. I do remember walking into the kitchen in the morning and having the very sight of the microwave start my mouth watering. I made tea by filling a (plastic) travel mug with water, dropping in a bag of tea (usually the grocery-store variety I later learned to call “church tea”) and nuking it for a minute and a half. Garnish with an absurd amount of sugar, and I was primed for the morning.

Any staples in the tea-bag assembly just added to the sense of recklessness. Aspects of my attitude towards tea have shocked enough different people that I’m no longer apologetic about it. Church tea is fine by me, though I’ll drink good stuff if I can get it. (I suppose if I was a coffee drinker, I’d be OK with instant.) I’ll boil the water in a kettle if I have one and the time, but the microwave is fine. Anything that holds the water is OK; I’m not picky about the container and will cheerfully brew tea in a plastic mug. Also, since I learned to drink tea in Poland, of all places, I’ll pass on the milk. Any other sacred tea cows I can gore? Oh, yes, metal in the microwave. Nothing caught on fire or exploded that I recall.

I sometimes snicker at people who pretend to complain about their coffee-caffeine addiction (or, sometimes, their Starbucks addiction.) I know one guy who annually goes cold turkey, and he describes some pretty distinct withdrawl symptoms. But the taste in my mouth when I hadn’t even put the water in the mug yet? That was pure brainstem talking; my tongue was not actually involved.

As a perpetually under-rested undergraduate, I went back and forth between decaf and caffeinated tea. If I drank decaf, I simply slept through class. If I had caffeinated tea, I was drowsy and jittery. Nowadays I compare decaf to methadone.

When I ride in to work, I bring the empty mug and a tea bag and brew the tea on arrival. (I can’t really ride with a mug, and there’s not enough time for me to drink it at home before I leave.) As I gathered all the pieces and got ready to leave this morning, I found myself looking around for the hot mug which wasn’t there, and that taste was in my mouth again. I’ve been hooked. The question is: is it the caffeine, the sugar, or just the taste?

Now Playing: Lullaby In Three/Four from Monday Morning Cold by Erin McKeown