Fix

It’s been three weeks since I’ve abandoned coffee. In my efforts to stifle my caffeine consumption, I switched to tea. “Did you know tea has more caffeine than coffee?” came the rhetorical question. “No. No, I didn’t, and let’s keep it that way.”
I guess it was an illusory transition, but I’ve been raised since birth accepting that tea is generally good for you. Upon realizing that I was sick, my parents treated me as a funnel. Apparently, a hot cup of earl grey soothes the sore throat, and it was a simple way to smuggle some vitamin C from a squeezed lemon past my taste buds. When I was ill, it came down to six cups a day, and tealeaves took temporary residence on the food pyramid. Perhaps, that is the just the culture my family keeps; it’s simpler elsewhere.
In England, there is teatime: a national afternoon break for a lovely cup of tea. In China, green tea is a common serving of hospitality for guests. In America, it’s a venti caramel dolce latte a couple of times a day until you’re crashing like a heroin junkie, or the lesser known Tea Party – your choice.
I can’t tell if our consumption culture has relieved traditional duty or if there never was a traditional, American, approach to tea or coffee. I remember reading once, that Americans adopted coffee because it was cheaper than tea, and treated it as a symbol of independence after the Boston Tea Party. Certainly, they stuck it to the man. I’m not sure if our founding fathers would have made themselves at home at their residential Starbucks, sipping away their frappe like today’s coffee shop intellectuals. But it certainly seems to be the American thing to do.
Count me out; I’m rebelling against the charred bean corporate coffee culture. Maybe that’s the American thing to do. I can start my own culture, and call it the Tea Union, or the Tea Boys, or better yet the Tea Party. Maybe I can take your cup of coffee and turn it into my cup of tea. If I did, would you vote for me?