My cousin asked me last week how I can possibly wake up without coffee. I was stumped. How does anyone wake up? You just do. Sometimes slow, sometimes all of a sudden.

(Oh, and also I didn’t learn to drive until I was in my late 20s and moved to Los Angeles a/k/a purgatory and was FORCED to, else I’d suffer DECADES of dependence and misery. My New York-raised self quavered but rallied and learned. Then I moved back east, back to the land of mass transit. Or, well, much closer to it, anyway.)

(PS: Delurking. We apparently have at least one friend in common, also I love your novels. And your fun blog voice.)

Liset: use bleach to clean out the thermos instead of throwing away the thermos. It gets rid of tea stains on metal and ceramic containers, too. Just clean it out with really hot water afterwards to get rid of the bleach.

I definitely agree with everyone’s who noted that coffee smells wonderful but tastes terrible, making it an extra evil substance. Don’t they know I depend on smell to figure out what to consume, and that kind of deception is just cruel? And the worst thing about coffee is definitely the perception that grown-up adult types drink it. I just finished my first year of college, and I was asked approximately 400 times if/when I was going to start drinking coffee. I tried to consume it in fancy chocolatey drinks, but all I could think was this is good…except for this coffee part.

I’ve just switched over from soda to tea for my caffeine source, and while I’m good at finding iced teas I like, I still haven’t tried any hot tea except generic lipton. Any recommendations from the tea drinkers?

People tell me I have to add cream or something but I’m lactose intolerant, so that’s a no-no. Also, if I add sugar it makes me pee like a racehorse. (TMI) It will always taste icky.

Us coffee-haters are pretty oppressed, though. When you say you don’t drink coffee, people give you this look–like you are a child or completely insane. Something must be wrong with you.

I will confess to loving the smell.

I once had a friend who insisted I taste her mocha because, and I quote, “You won’t even taste the coffee.” I tasted, made a face, and told her that I don’t like burnt toast in my hot chocolate.

This comment thread has had the most deleted comments ever. Double mwahahahaha!

~Mary

I much prefer tea as my hot beverage of choice (my cold beverage of choice as well). I have suffered many attempts at conversion, yet remain unimpressed.

::sip::

For the Love of All That Is Holy, what is this dreck! OMG, I’ll never get this, uh, taste? Is that what this sensation is. This need to pull my tongue out with pliers? What on earth ever possessed me to try this swill? I think I need to go eat grass to get this out of my mouth.

Bizarrely, I do occasionally enjoy coffee with sambucca after a meal, but I think that’s just my brain persuading me to sneak in some more alcohol.

The smell of coffee brewing has always made me ill. Truly. I can’t go into a coffee shop for a long period of time, and when I walk down the coffee and cereal aisle of the grocery store to get to the granola and oatmeal, I hold my breath.