skilcoyne.com

 

So I’m doing this blogging A to Z thing for the month of April. I get Sundays off. Day 3 – C.

“Hey, Steve, how do yo like your coffee?”

“Black, like I like…” OK, not going there.

I was 15 or 16 when I started drinking coffee. Mountain Dew just wasn’t making me jumpy enough. At the deli where I worked, “regular” coffee meant milk and sugar. I was a regular guy (yeah, not really…), so I started drinking regular coffee.

I switched to black about 10 years ago. Along with the unlimited carrot sticks, Weight Watchers lets you drink as much black coffee as you want. As my waistline clearly shows, I’ve long since given up subsisting on carrot sticks, but I’ve fully embraced the black coffee.

People tend to be a little incredulous when I say I drink black coffee. They make that face babies make when you feed them lemons and say “Reeaally? I have milk…” Then I have to convince them I actually prefer it black.

Similar conversations start when I say “Scotch, neat.” “Reeaally? I have ice…”

My parents were half ‘n half people. No bread in the house? No big deal – there were kids with bicycles living there. No half ‘n half in the house? GET IN THE CAR!!

So one day when I was about 10 years old, I was in the A&P with my dad – probably on an emergency half ‘n half run – and asked, “What exactly is half ‘n half?”

Dad, in his best terrible Dick Van Dyke cockney: “It’s aff me wife’s and aff me own.”

Ba dum bum! Best dad joke ever.

As someone who actually prefers my coffee with nothing but a mug, here’s my purely subjective rundown on take-out coffee, starting with the best:

1. Quick Chek.
2. Dunkin’ Donuts – better on ice.
3. 7-11.
4. Everyone else.
5. Starbucks. Way too bitter to drink black, but good if you want to add a bunch of stuff to it and skip dessert.