a boy and his cup

The boys were piled into the car Saturday morning and driven out to Maryland. The first stop was to pick-up Sue who’d invited everyone on a visit to the National Aquarium in Baltimore. This isn’t about the aquarium. I decided to stop at Murky Coffee in Clarendon for a cup of brain juice. We all have little lessons we learn in life and then promptly forget (is that a lesson? is it learned?). This lesson will be called the “white shirt and to-go coffee cup”. The four leading indicators for this little nugget of misery are the following: a too full cup of coffee, the cup seam-to-lid hole location, a belief in ‘spill proof’ drinking silos, and being in a car en route to somewhere other than a short errand – someplace like an aquarium 60 miles away. Two of the four were clearly in play (belief and miles) so klaxons should have been sounding in my little head…yet, the human mind refuses to suspend belief or even contemplate that a spill proof cup might not be spill proof. I was almost in the red before I even got up a head of steam. My large house brew was too full before I sidled over to the milksugarcinnamonmagic bar but I still managed to get just enough milk and sugar into my paper cup so that a meniscus formed on top – that’s three indicators for you playing at home. I grab a sippy lip, slap that baby on top (very carefully), and click down over a steaming, overfilled cup of Panama Boquete Hacienda La Esmeralda Especial. I’m out the door before you know it, skipping to the car, singing some Roger Miller, and imagining myself a smart boy. We pull out of the parking lot, squirm around a corner, and start the drive up a lovely boulevard north of Clarendon. I’ve got some music playing, the windows are down, the breezes are blowing, the boys are doing games in the backseat, and my coffee is calling my name. Ah…a nice sip of quality coffee from my perfectly mixed cup. Why does my chest feel hot? Funny. Another sip of my coffee. Why do my legs feel hot? Dammit. I’m censoring that response. My trust has been violated. The spill proof cup, with the perfectly aligned cup seam, steam, overfilled liquid, and sippy hole configuration, has done me in again. I pull over on the leafy damn boulevard (it’s not so lovely now) and pull out a bottle of water and some napkins to clean my clothing. The quick-ish response does prevent me from driving home to change clothes but I’m absolutely infuriated for the next ten miles. This one will stick with me for at least a week – I won’t be fooled, don’t even try. No guarantees after October because there’s clearly a pattern: the other dozen times this has happened in my life haven’t remained as strong warnings in my head, Hell, I can’t even remember to duck when walking through our apartment in order to avoid smashing my head on the monkey-bar that’s installed in the dining room doorway. A little hot coffee isn’t any big deal, right? Whack. Ouch!

T.