Shopping for the Addict

When I was young, my religious upbringing held sway over a rather large swath of my opinions and actions.

Now, of course, I'm a filthy heathen. I'm attracted to women during the Sabbath and everything. But that's another story.

Most of the things I believed back when I was 15 changed gradually, but one thing changed in a matter of minutes, and I can even remember the day it happened: reaction to the testimony of others.

You see, I had been instructed to express euphoria and cheer and smile and laugh and cheer some more and basically act all-over impressed whenever I heard a story about someone discovering the error of their ways and Coming To The Lord.

"Hi kids. My name is Ruddiger, and when I was your age, I used to drink gasoline and kick babies every night. I was addicted to every drug known to man, and my family was real embarrassed to have me over for Thanksgiving. I used to smoke and drink and swear and lick prostitutes and pee on nuns, until one day when I drank way more gasoline than normal. I was so fogged I couldn't even see straight, and I kicked what I thought was a baby. It turned out to be a statue of a cherub. The spark my steel-toed boot made when it struck that statue set me on fire, and they rushed me to the hospital. On the way there, I died six times, and it was between the fourth and fifth time that I decided that my life was headed in the wrong direction."

My schoolmates and I were being subjected to one such testimony when it hit me: it took almost dying to finally make this person realize they could be practicing better time management?

So when the cheering started, I didn't join in.

Bring this person's empathetic best friend out here and have him tell how he avoided the temptation to do all those things in the first place and then I'll cheer.

Sadly, this is how I saw the world until I became an addict myself. Coffee is my gasoline.

Before one has seen the world through the coffee-stained bottom of a glass mug, one is not fit to judge. It looks kind of brown and smudgy, and it is comforting until the Costco stops carrying your addict beans.

Oh, up until then, everything was swell! I had my big ol' bag of these evil-looking oily beans--beans that looked like petroleum beetles and smelled like crystallized laughter--and all was right in the mill and with the world. I was down to my last Mason jar of them, and the Father and I set out for Costco so that I might resupply.

In junkie lingo, I was "makin' a run" to my "connection" for the "shit" so that I could "grind" it in my "coffee mill," "drink" it and "get toasted on the roasted."

When I saw that they did not have my "shit," I panicked.

"It's gotta be here!" I squealed. "They had a whole skid of it last time! What do they want from me!? I have money, you barbarians! I can pay you!"

I had to make a substitution, obviously, as there were plenty of other types of coffee available. But I was an addict, and I did not WANT any other coffee. I wanted MY coffee. The junkie panic fermented into junkie petulance, and I looked around for a Costco logo to glare at.

"Quit squintin' at the signs, boy," my father intervened.

"Hmph."

"Look, they have other dark roasts. Let's try one of them."

"Don't want to. Want mine. Those bags are the wrong color. I don't like the drawing of meerkats on that one."

Eventually he wore me down, and I ended up taking home three different types of coffee to audition. Three. Once home, I set about pouring the beans into Mason jars to preserve the freshness.

Oh no.

This just wasn't fair.

I didn't have enough Mason jars.

It was then, dear time-wasters, that I realized my life was headed in the wrong direction.