On Caffeine

I have always had a love/hate relationship with caffeine.  I was never much of a soda drinker as a child, and my dad’s penchant for poking holes in soda cans to turn them into dribble cups lead me to cling to clear drinks, to save myself the embarrassment of a cola stain on my shirt.   No one in my childhood home drank tea or coffee, so caffeine really wasn’t a part of my upbringing.  I blame this, and my inherent “vertical hold problem” with the problem I have with caffeine.  To put it bluntly, I’m not allowed to partake.

In college I learned the joy of a great cup of tea.  I’m still a big fan.  How wonderfully civilized to sit with a “cuppa” after school and read or help Logan with his homework.  In fact, this became a habit when he was in 3^rd grade.  We’d come home from school, he’d pull out his homework and I’d brew a cup of Twinings Vanilla Tea.  The hope was that having a cup to sip would calm me down during the homework battle that was waged that year.  (His ADHD made it a challenging year.)  This went well until one afternoon that will live in infamy.

On Mondays we’d plough through his assignments as fast as possible, dash down to Fremont to pick Sean up from BART and then take my stepdaughter out to dinner.  Well this day I noticed that the other drivers were REALLY MAKING ME CRAZY and oddly, I seemed to be grinding my teeth.   When I arrived at the BART station, Sean was waiting and I pulled up to the curb.  Because I was worried we were running late, I parked quickly, perpendicular to the curb.  Yes, the rest of the cars were parked parallel, but I figured we would be there 10 seconds, tops.  And yes the nose of my van did come close to the fire hydrant, but it DIDN’T touch it.  I then jumped out of the van and TOSSED the car keys to Sean because I didn’t want to drive any more.  He says I threw them at him, but I swear I was just tossing them over the hood of the van.

From that day on, Sean has banned me from caffeine.  It’s really more of a joke than a true restriction.  It’s not like he threw away all the tea in the house, but I really have to make a cognizant decision whether or not to imbibe.  And, well, there is no restriction on chocolate.  I’d still love a cup of tea in the afternoons, but we’ve found that even decaffeinated teas make me grind my teeth.  And sorry, I just can’t stomach fruit teas.

As a teacher, I’m one of the minorities when it comes to coffee drinking.  In fact, I’m even a minority amongst my friends.  It makes me wonder, why do people allow themselves to become addicted to it?  Just this last weekend my step-daughter had to deal with a bad headache because she hadn’t had caffeine for 2 days.  What’s the draw?  From what I understand, once you become a habitual coffee or tea drinker, it’s very hard to get started in the morning without it.  I guess I just need to put it on the list of things I just don’t understand.