Offending the Coffee God
Today in History, I had one of those moments. You know, a moment. A point in time when you wish the ground would open and swallow you up. And now that I think about it, this is the second moment that I’ve had in History. And both have involved coffee.
I have a dreadful, dreadful time trying to stay awake in History, because it’s my first-hour class. It’s very fortunate, though, that my teacher happens to be Mr. Sutton, who is extremely nice and makes coffee.
My first coffee moment happened… well, I think it was a couple of months ago. But anyway. I was bearing a used coffee filter filled with icky, soggy coffee grounds across the room to throw away. I was literally a foot away from the trash can when the filter decided to tear and spill its (disgusting!) contents all. Over. The. Floor.
Erin Hayes, being the wonderful person that she is, helped me run back and forth from the bathroom to the classroom with paper towels to clean up the mess.
Has the word “embarrassing” come to mind, yet?
Today was (dare I say it?) even worse.
A pot of coffee had already been emptied between Mr. Sutton, TJ, Julian, and Erin. So I raised my hand and asked, “Mr. Sutton? Can we make more coffee? Because I really want some.”
Eventually, TJ was sent off to the boys’ bathroom for more water, and Julian replaced the used coffee filter with a new one (without spilling anything). A little while later, Mr. Sutton informed me that the coffee was ready.
I started to walk over to the coffeepot, and was faced with a dilemma: Mr. Sutton had his feet propped up on JJ’s desk, and I couldn’t get past him. Oh well, not a problem. I would just crawl under them.
The crawling went just fine, but the getting up was an entirely different matter altogether. (This is the beginning of my moment, by the way.) Without looking to see what I was doing, I reached for the corner of Mr. Sutton’s desk to pull myself back up.
I hadn’t realized that his almost-full cup of coffee was sitting on that corner. I’m not kidding when I tell you that time slowed down for a second. The mug toppled into my hands, warm coffee spilling over them and down my left arm, splashing onto the floor. I made a mad grab at the mug, but it slipped out of my hands and crashed into a million little pieces on the floor.
… Actually, I’m just kidding about that last part. It kind of just crashed to the floor and lay there amidst a growing coffee puddle. I had a huge wet spot along my right thigh, and the left arm of my sweater was absolutely soaked.
“My cup!” Mr. Sutton cried, picking it up and turning it back and forth. I stared at it for a second, knowing that something was off about it, but not knowing quite what.
Oh, nononoNO, I thought when realization hit me.
The handle of the mug had disappeared.
After about three trips back and forth from the bathroom for paper towels (does this sound familiar? And just how much coffee can a cup hold, really?!), the lake on the floor was almost gone. I couldn’t find the missing handle anywhere.
You must know that during this entire episode, there was a background of uproarious laughter. I returned, shamefaced, to my seat.
A few minutes later, Mr. Sutton asked if I still wanted coffee. I widened my eyes at him slightly. And risk more danger? I already had a huge coffee stain on my right thigh. “No,” I said.
Eventually, Lucy got up and fetched me a cup of coffee, which I accepted very, very carefully. And then sat in class for the rest of the 90-minute period and sipped it very, very slowly, aware of an icky brown stain on my jeans and waited desperately for the caffeine to work. I hoped that all my bad luck in History meant that I wouldn’t fail my Physics final.
I really must have offended the Coffee God somehow.
— Michelle Gao