When I was growing up, my mother was very particular about how to drink coffee or tea. Tea was to be poured into a China tea cup, of which I still have many, and coffee was consumed from a demitasse cup. In neither case would one ever use a mug -- ever. In fact, I don't believe we had any mugs in our house. We were taught to be very particular about using our spoon. It should not be heard, if possible, and never, ever tapped against the side of the cup. No slurping, please, and no pouring the tea or coffee into the saucer. If one was in a restaurant, and the tea or coffee was served with liquid spilled into the saucer, we were to ask for a new cup -- never, under any circumstances, put a paper napkin on the saucer to mop it up. In our home, my mother didn't own paper napkins, only the finest linen serviettes. We had tea serviettes and dinner serviettes, and each of us had our own serviette ring. I still have mine. It's a little red elephant.
After all my mother's instruction, I was disappointed the other day to find that I will never be a coffee walker. You know those folks -- you see them everywhere, perhaps you are one. They can juggle a cell phone, a tote bag, a knapsack, a water bottle, perhaps a small child-- and in Vancouver always an umbrella -- and with wonderful dexterity they can also enjoy a cup of coffee, all without breaking a stride. How do they do it? How did we become a nation of coffee walkers? Tim Horton's, Blenz, ... Barstucks we take our coffee everywhere. I tried it on the weekend. I bought a cup of coffee at Blenz, $3.85 for a small coffee. Yikes. But as I walked through the mall, I realized that I didn't have the hand/eye coordination required to walk and drink at the same time. After a few steps, I had to sit down. It was embarrassing. I felt as though people were looking at me."Look at that woman; she has to sit down to drink her coffee."
"Well, that's just sad."
I am old enough to remember when people actually went places without their water, their telephones and their huge containers of coffee. Unfortunately, I'll never be a coffee walker. It's just sad.
18 comments:
Yesterday, I suggested to D2 that we go to Barstucks and she said okay, but we should just get our coffee and drink it as we drove. Horrors! Drink and Drive??? Isn't that illegal?
Since living outside of Canada I really notice the changes over the years in peoples' behaviour whenever I go back to visit, and walking around with a cup of coffee is one of the strange sights I see there. The other is carrying a mug of coffee into a car.
I'm glad those customs haven't reached here and we do sit down to drink coffee from cups and saucers in cafes and restaurants as well as at home. (I still love Canada though!) :)
Call me crass, but the prissy fooling around with tea cups, coffee demitasses and serviettes of your youth endear me to the slobs that were my parents.
An inability to be a coffee walker is perhaps a disappointment but in the overall scheme of things small potatoes. Cheer up, fill your mug, to hell with the prissy, and live life to the fullest.
I don't juggle all those things when I coffee-walk, just me and the coffee, but then I have made a choice not to carry a phone around with me anyway ~ gets in the way of living. Coffee on the other hand, enhances living! ( actually, my nephew & niece years ago mimicked me by walking down the driveway sipping out of mugs saying "we're Aunt Kathy".
Your mother sounds like a true lady ! I do prefer sipping tea from china teacups and when I have company prefer cloth napkins. Still, I sip coffee from mugs when I am walking outside.
BTW, I forgot to say, those people on the streets juggling all those things are certainly coordinated, aren't they?I think they can even chew gum while they're doing all that juggling.
Me too on lacking the dexterity, and I have the car and sweater stains to prove it. And, I find something kind of sweet about your mom's Emily Post rules.
I can't do it either. In fact, when I drive with a large travel mug of coffee which has a sippy hole in the lid, I use a straw. I unscrew the lid and drink at red lights because when I use the sippy hole, it goes up my nose and spills all over me.
I think the generation gap is never more apparent than in ones ability to multitask. We were taught to do everything carefully with attention; the world moves too fast for that now, and younger folks must do several things at once. Plus, they work out incessantly and are far more physically capable than we are.
Oh Jo you crack me up!
I think it sounds like your Momma had a lot of rules, a bit fussy for me but I agree with your need to sit while drinking. I am not a coffee walker and I don't carry a phone. In fact I have never been able to be comfortable with headphones on while walking, I need to hear my surroundings.
My son works at Barstucks (ha ha never heard that before) and he is amazed at how important coffee is to his customers, they take it very seriously. He is 19 and he has found that they want to pay a lot for their coffee (yet complain at the same time)and it is some sort of status symbol. Walking with Coffee...
I am not a coffee walker either...but I love coffee in mugs and tea in tea cups with saucers... I have to sit to drink my coffee and preferably across the table from a good friend...
Jo
The coffee thing certainly has grown - I remember when I'd never heard of Tim Horton except on the ice!
I try to drink my coffee "in" when I buy it out because otherwise having a coffee seems like an unconcious act and a waste of good money.
What I have noticed over the last few years that astounds me is people in the swimming pool with a water bottle on the side . . really!
Way back in days of yore we weren't supposed to drink water while exercising because we'd get stomach cramps ! HA!!
Sounds like your mother would never have condoned coffee walking anyway, so you're in good standing. (or sitting, haha)
I am old school, too. I think coffee should be savored. It is a "break" in my morning chores. A treat. My grandmother had an afternoon coffee break daily. The world was never too busy for her to take 30 minutes to sit and enjoy her cup of coffee. I was named for her, so I will carry on the tradition.
I like the savoring also. I meet my niece every couple of months at Starbucks and we talk over coffee for a couple of hours. They're paper cups now, not china, but the experience is just as fine!
This is my first visit to your blog and I enjoyed it very much. Now that I am retired I rarely visit shopping malls so I have not noticed coffee walkers. I don’t think I could do it – I like to sit down and savor my coffee. I like your illustrations.
I was brought up the same way Jo. We ate our meals and drank our beverages sitting down. To this day, when I go to Starbucks, I take a seat after getting my order.
I think it's better to sit down with your coffee anyway--if it is going to cost $3.85, you might as well savor it.
Oh, not at all sad. But then you're a dignified and particular soul. It's too bad there are not more of you, who are not walking around with their coffee.
Sadly, I have degenerated to drinking my tea from a mug. Very functional — utilitarian — in keeping with "these days." But a nice china cup, with freshly brewed tea, it a small slice of perfection.
I still use my napkin ring. Turquoise with fine lines of patterned gold.
Good grief! I'm beginning to think I'm some kind of antique.
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