We Are Not International Coffee People

Organic. Fair-trade. Artisan. Hard foam. No foam. Triple Lutz Al Pacino with room. Today’s gourmet coffee obsession focuses on supersonic Mach-3 beans, and an order as complex and individualized as a strand of your DNA–requiring a Bachelor of Barista.

Remember when coffee considered “fancy” came flavored and scooped out of a rectangular tin? It wasn’t just coffee. Actually, it wasn’t even coffee, but one part coffee-per-million Swiss mocha cremains. Whatever International Coffee lacked in taste, our generational palate was too young and ignorant to notice the difference. Come to think of it, maybe no real-life adults drank International Coffee. Maybe, for those of us with the inherited coffee gene, it allowed us to feel coffee mature–bridging the chasm between coffee ice cream and our parents’ Folgers. Anyway, people didn’t drink International Coffee for the taste of the coffee, but for that International Coffee Moment.

If you watched enough 1980s television, you know that International Coffee People didn’t swig from a reusable BPA-free pony keg on their morning commute, but rather imbibed with slow, smiling, celebratory sips from a 6-ounce porcelain teacup—carefree pinkies raised—among their girlfriends and wearing freshly popped collars or a “still fits!” old prom dress. Whether the kids had each other bound and gagged in the attic, or your boss held on to your shoulder pads a little too longingly that afternoon, International Coffee promised soft light, intimacy, laughter, and perfectly ven-diagrammed eyeshadow. World-weary? Busted by your parole officer? Having another psychotic break? International Coffee brought serenity and festive banter. Just take a load off with your spouse or gal pals (and your most intimate confidant the camera man/television viewing audience) sip some International Coffee, and start giggling over the new love of your life— Double Dutch Chocolate now only 70 calories with 100% Nutrasweet. International Coffee became the Calgon, Take Me Away! of beverages.

My girlfriend told me that when she and her husband were looking for their first home, she would relate to each room according to beverage; Wow, I can totally see myself sitting in that breakfast nook with my morning coffee or This porch swing begs for an afternoon cup of tea. No, she did not say to herself Let’s spend 19 hours painting the nursery and then watch our 8 month-old spontaneously combust during a diaper change, while I cry into my wine, or I can just imagine myself chain-smoking in this bathtub after 17 sleepless months with a toddler and an infant.

Then it hit me.

We are a generation trying forever in vain to recreate International Coffee moments. As we age and spawn, we’re forced to marry the reality of our cat-puked stained carpet and pliers-where-a-knob-once-was toaster ovens with all those manufactured moments 1980s television buried into our young psyches.

In my home, when our kids’ bedtimes drone on, the television audience won’t see teaspoons stirring in bone china, feet cozying up on ottomans, and chuckling between my Husband and I. We will not be freshly-creased and belted at the waist. You will likely find us without appropriate undergarments. “We” in fact might mean my laptop and I hermiting in the bedroom under two down comforters—my husband in a hotel in a distant city where consultants live four days per week. After the children finally settle (due only to Threat level Code Fuchsia: Never Wii Again), and on nights when my Husband lives in our house, he might emerge after 45-minutes of power-leaf-blowing outside or any variety of white-noise aggression-reducing activities in the basement to meet my laptop and I in the bedroom. Depending on our mood, we may engage in passionate couple’s blank stares followed by tantric meal planning and school pickup/drop-off coordinating. If any beverages are consumed, they are of the category only permitted to people over 21.

With the exception of reality-TV personalities, most of us have grown and come to realize there is no camera and no viewing audience (thank God). While poignant moments with loved ones and lively conversation among friends occurs, it doesn’t typically coincide with anything freeze-dried, flavored, and in a quadrilateral. Maybe in adulthood our generation—in creating and living our own authentic moments—expects more actual coffee from our coffee. As we come to grips with the fact that we are not International Coffee People, but exhausted fallible middle-aged people with unwanted hair, living at best among happy–if sticky–shambles, we at least want real coffee. We want good coffee, strong coffee and plenty of it.